


tired starlings

by aerialiste



Category: Supernatural
Genre: 10x07 coda, Angelic Grace, Coda, Dominant Castiel, Don't Try This At Home, Episode: s10e07 Girls Girls Girls, Exactly What It Says on the Tin, Fight Sex, Fist Fights, Internalized Homophobia, Light BDSM, M/M, Mark of Cain, Mildly Dubious Consent, Non-Consensual Touching, Sastiel if you squint, Season/Series 10
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-07
Updated: 2014-12-07
Packaged: 2018-02-27 23:46:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 21,061
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2711135
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aerialiste/pseuds/aerialiste
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cas studied the starburst pattern in the broken window of a half-emptied hardware store on the other side of the street. The fractured glass glittered in the early morning sunlight like Indra’s jewels. <em>Damaged things</em>, he thought, <em>had such unbearable beauty</em>.</p><p>He looked back at Dean, looked into his eyes, the color of the summerfields around Reykjavík, or the lush Ngorongoro caldera. He smiled at him, having absolutely no idea what he was saying. Only his face mattered.</p><p>And, just like that, Cas was <em>done</em>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	tired starlings

**Author's Note:**

> Do people even put copyright abnegation on fics anymore? Just in case: hello, television network! I own neither your infuriating characters nor your unevenly attended-to, frequently offensive narrative: they apparently own _my_ sorry ass.

_“James Novak_ ,” he typed this time.

This time he also remembered to use quotation marks, and search via the state police database Sam had shown him how to break into.

He lifted his hands to his mouth and blew on them, waiting for the results. He’d turned off the car to save gas, and as it grew colder, so did Castiel, almost without noticing.

 _So many different names_ , he thought, sifting through the hundreds of records, adding the filter _Pontiac, Illinois_ to narrow down the search. Legal names on birth certificates; aliases on forged government badges; nicknames given out with seeming carelessness by close friends, handled casually, irreverently, in their mouths. He’d come to understand the subtleties between these categories over the years. Not so different from angels, really; Cas had names which he hadn’t heard anyone use in millennia, and several which had never been uttered.

 _Jimmy Novak_ didn’t work, even with quotation marks; the website of a radio personality or a character from a low-budget television program weren’t what he wanted. Really he needed very little information—he already knew all there was to know about his vessel’s infancy, childhood, family of origin, education, health, work history, relationships, dislikes, preferences, memories, dreams, sins, desires, secrets. The Slavic name Nowak went back several hundred of years; Jimmy’s pale, easily bruised skin and broad cheekbones came from his Bulgarian ancestors, his Ashkenazi denim eyes and dark hair and perpetual five o’clock shadow from Estonia. He had a bachelor’s in accounting from Urbana–Champaign and had met Amelia in high school at Christian summer camp, where he’d also furtively blown his counselor behind the boathouse. He loved pastry with poppy seeds, loathed green olives, had collected Kirby-era _Fantastic Four_ comics as a teenager, and had to think about baby wild animals (usually wombats or koalas, sometimes pangolins) in order to fall asleep.

Castiel already knew all that, and more. All he needed now was an address.

When he finally found it, he let out the breath he’d been holding; a white puff of condensation appeared like a small cloud in front of his mouth. He stuck the key back in the Continental’s ignition, turning the heat all the way up. Without Hannah, it made no sense to put another night in the motel on their remaining credit card, even though his body suffered from the cold again, and his hands and lips felt cracked, his eyes grainy.

 _Presumed dead_ , he read; _surviving family includes wife, remarried, and one daughter_ —Castiel’s vision blurred. He let the laptop slip off his right knee onto the passenger side, and held his hands out in front of the vent to warm them, though the heat also burned a little. _Maybe this dries out the skin_ , he thought, belatedly.

His phone lit up in the darkness of the front seat, its sound turned off, only a faint blue glow: SAM. He turned off the car and touched the screen.

“Hey, there’s a problem,” Sam said without preamble. He sounded breathless, as if he’d been running, or fighting. Agitated.

It took Cas a second to respond, his brain slowed and groggy. “Are you in danger?”

“No, we’re fine. I mean, we had a witch situation, but—no, it’s not like that.” Cas could hear him trying to calm himself, slow his breathing. He could tell Sam was pacing, probably running his hands through his hair. “It’s Dean again. Look, he’s in the shower and I don’t have long—can you just meet me?”

“Of course. Are we close enough for halfway? I’m in Kentucky, a place called—” Cas fumbled for the motel receipt—“Ashland.”

Sam exhaled a shaking breath. “Yeah, okay. We’re actually just outside St. Louis, I could—”

Cas interrupted. “Indianapolis would be preferable. I need to be in Illinois next.”

He didn’t mention Claire, or Hannah and their recently evaporated mission. What _had_ the mission been? He felt confused and despairing when he asked himself. Working at half-grace didn’t help him think clearly. Maybe his goals had been, yet again, misguided ones.

“That’ll work. It’s like a four-hour drive, but Dean took a pretty good beating—nothing weird,” Sam added hastily, “not witch stuff, just a pissed-off guy—so I’m gonna tape him up, poke some oxy down him.” Cas heard rustling sounds, glass clinking against glass. “He’ll be out like a light.”

Cas pressed his lips together, hard. Inside him he felt his stomach flip over.

“Shit, he’s—I’ll call from the road.” Sam hung up without waiting for an answer.

Cas sat there for a long minute, staring at the phone, before thumbing over to the GPS application and typing in the name of the city. Injuries that needed to be taped—ribs? face? Why had this man been angry at Dean?

And Sam didn’t want to be overheard telling Cas about it, or making plans to meet. It had to be the Mark. Maybe Dean had even attacked this man for the sake of it, needing to slake that thirst—to feel something intensely. To hurt, to be hurt.

Mechanically, Cas plugged the phone into its charger, and then stuck that into the cigarette lighter before he slipped the car into drive, checking in the rearview mirror as he merged out onto the farm-to-market road and headed away from town.

Away from Caroline and Joe. The car seemed quiet without Hannah, her bright observations and quick temper, her continual prim reminders of orthodoxy in conflict with her own messy, emergent desires.

Of course she’d felt conflicted. He remembered too well the bewilderment, at first, of being incarnated.

In fact incarnation continued to bewilder him; he’d just grown more and more accustomed to its inner swervings and collisions, the tormented stupid longing and fantastical imaginings that crashed repeatedly against reality, the body craving sensations which it naïvely assumed should belong to it by rights, but that it could never in actuality experience.

What was Caroline doing with Joe right now? He could guess what they were doing; he’d seen the way their eyes met. Remembering that shared look now made his heart skip a beat, high up in his chest. He shifted in his seat, restless. 

(He now has, he tries not to notice, the incessant sense of something about to burst out of him that he has to keep shoving back and down, and it’s exhausting. He deals with it by staring around it, past it, over it, never directly at it. And he employs all the physical movements of emotional repression he’s learned from watching Dean Winchester so closely, over the years: clenching his jaw. Swallowing hard. Inhaling and tightening his stomach muscles. He can’t admit it feels almost as bad as Leviathan, almost as bad as Lucifer mocking and singing and screaming into a bullhorn, pretending to be Castiel himself, pretending to be Dean.)

 _Passions_ , she’d said; _hungers_. To feel water droplets on her skin.

He hadn’t had any thought about kissing Hannah, any desire for her, and still his mouth had clung instinctively to hers. She’d grabbed his coat in her hands in urgent fistfuls, pulling him closer, the way Dean’s hands had curled around his wrists once, twice, to plead with him (for what), down on his knees in front of Cas, beseeching in an alleyway, begging in a crypt.

“I’m done,” she had said, simply.

 _I’m done_. Cas didn’t know he was mouthing it to himself in the car as he replayed her serene resolution. The near-deafening roar of a creek, fed with early snowmelt. His hands hanging at his sides, empty. Hers gripping the bridge railing, resolved and exultant.

(What would it be like, to be _done_? What would you do if you weren’t always fighting?)

He pulled out onto the interstate, absently scrolling through radio stations, not expecting to pick up a signal. _The only heaven I’ll be sent to / is when I’m alone with you_ , sang a young man in a rich baritone, backed by an echoing piano, as if recorded in an empty cathedral. 

The hair stood up on the back of his neck all by itself. For no particular reason it made him think of [Århus Domkirke](http://aarhusdomkirke.dk/english/). He’d watched at a distance, so many centuries ago, that afternoon in the Jutlands as the humans finished their first church. The sailors who’d built it laughed and sweated and worked in the rare sunlight of a northern summer, tossing bricks for the new walkway back and forth, competing, their bodies so young, so frail yet strong, prayer in their hearts but a beautiful libidinal energy in their flesh and muscles and skin.

 _I prayed to you, Cas,_ every night _—_

He turned up the volume all the way to drown out that ecstatic voice ( _amen / amen / amen_ ) and slammed the accelerator down hard, almost angrily, until the car roared and rushed forward.

•

Sam was already there when Cas pulled off the road, pacing and stamping his feet by the agreed-upon mile marker. He’d pulled over the Impala next to what looked like an abandoned ranch or maybe dairy: a cluster of weathered barns, a corral and cattle chute ringed with plank fencing, broken. Straggling round hay bales, half-collapsed, silvered with dew.

Cas put the car into park but left the engine running and the lights on, and Sam took the cue, opening the passenger door and sliding in, hugging Cas briefly from the side before returning his hands to his coat pockets, shivering. He smelled like woodsmoke and beer.

“Hey, man. It’s good to see you.”

“You too, Sam.”

Sam studied him in the light from the instrument panel. “Don’t take this the wrong way, Cas, but you look like hammered crap.”

Cas felt half of his mouth lift up in a smile, pulled as if by puppet strings. “I know. But right now tell me what’s happening.” He shifted in his seat so they were almost facing each other. “Who hurt Dean?”

As Sam explained about the witches, and then Cole’s attack, Cas tried to listen but found his mind in too many places at once. It was difficult even to watch Sam while he talked because of the undisguised fear on his face. He looked—Cas fumbled for the word—spooked. Rattled. Something had obviously shocked him, who wasn’t easy to shock.

Another part of Cas’s mind kept going over and over what he’d been doing the last several weeks, hunting down angel after angel and making them return to heaven. Why? For what? They hadn’t been harming anyone, just trying to find their way among the humans—

And a surprisingly large portion of his thought process remained preoccupied by the feeling of a warm mouth sealed against his, breath soft against his cheek. The way Joe’s arm had tightened protectively around his wife’s waist; Caroline’s body curving into the touch. An unspoken trust between them. Her husband had _known_ somehow, Castiel thought—he’d seen through Hannah’s lie immediately, could tell she and Cas weren’t really involved.

There _was_ an actual something, there or not there between humans, that they could sense. Years ago they’d called it _phlogiston_ , then _aether_ ; _kundalini, orgone, vitalism_. Most humans now settled for the equally vague and meaningless _energy_ or _chemistry_ , still using scientific terms as if recognizing there was a materiality about what they felt, even though they were unable to perceive the reality of grace—or its human version—with their limited senses.

Yet still, they knew when it was present. Even in a vessel, Cas could feel twinges of it sparking along his nerve endings, enough to recognize it from inside—as when he’d surprised everyone, even himself, by winding his fist in a demon’s long hair and dragging his hand down her collarbone, short of breath, body suddenly filled with too much blood.

And other times, too many to count; but he was never going to allow himself to—

“—he said _that_ , all that old bullshit about not deserving to live, basically, how he knew he was going to die violently, all his live-by-the-sword, die-by-the-sword stuff. But it wasn’t what he said; it was his face. He _means_ it, Cas. He doesn’t think he has that much longer. And I don’t know why, and of course I can’t get him to talk to me. He won’t tell me shit.”

He paused and Cas looked up to see Sam gently and repeatedly tapping the dashboard with a clenched fist, brow tense with frustration; his eyes flickered back and forth as if speed-reading a grimoire frantic for answers.

Sam’s face, Cas thought, so familiar, at once very like Dean’s, yet dissimilar: irises more brown than green, nose longer and more narrow, cheekbones higher, jaw delicate, face almost heart-shaped where Dean’s squared off. Sam’s mouth was wide and mobile, expressive, reckless even; whereas Dean’s perfect lips closed up tightly and held things in, clamped down on unsaid words. Even when he feigned looseness, strolling up to the counter of the Gas ’n’ Sip, grinning as if he hadn’t just shoved Cas aside, even then his lips refused to admit anything that might—

Without even knowing he was about to do it, Cas leaned forward and kissed him, suddenly mindless with the need to press his mouth against another’s, feel warm skin on skin.

Everything stopped. Sam’s left hand shot out automatically in alarm, flew up and landed on Cas’s shoulder, and then sort of stayed there, not shoving away or pulling, just _there_.

Cas felt rather than heard Sam make a small startled sound in the back of his throat as he pressed forward, opening his mouth more deeply, needing to be closer, sliding his tongue against Sam’s. Sam’s other hand moved to Castiel’s face, thumb held completely still against the edge of his cheekbone. Cas stifled a moan and, utterly on autopilot, brought both hands up into Sam’s hair, kissing into his mouth as though it might be his last chance. Maybe it was; he could die soon and there would be no purgatory this time—and if there were, Dean would not be there—

Sam tasted exactly the way Cas had apparently, unbeknownst to him, expected him to taste: salty, metallic, a hint of something strong or darkly pungent. _Civet, musk, ambergris. Maleness_ , Cas wondered, _is this the way all men taste? I’ve only ever kissed women, how would_ I _know what it’s like to kiss a man, what would it be like to kiss_ —

Sam pulled away a bare half-inch, enough to let out a confused breath, his forehead furrowing. “Cas? What are you—?”

Hearing his own name broke a spell. In one heart-thudding, galvanizing instant, he became aware of what he had done, was still doing, and he was horrified.

My _hands_ , he thought, aghast—of their own volition they’d reached inside Sam’s canvas jacket, clutching the too-warm sweat-dampened flannel fabric of his shirt. Sam at some point had slid his own hand down Cas’s arm to his wrist, encircling it warily, hesitating, not wanting either to shove him away or to draw him in—

Castiel jerked back as if struck, and in the same backward movement, fumbled for the door handle, flinging himself out onto the ground. He hit the dirt on all fours and scrambled to his feet, moving blindly to get as far away from himself as he could get, until something immovable struck him in the shins and stopped him from going forward. He stood, panting and trembling, palms scraped bloody, pressed against whatever it was, and—

Behind him, in a steady voice, Sam was talking.

“Hey—hey, it’s fine, I just—are you okay? Is this about your grace?”

 _No, no_ , thought Cas, squeezing his eyes shut tightly, _no, it’s me, I’m wrong, I’m—_

“Cas, come on, man, try to stay calm. I need you to talk to me. What's going on?”

He’d managed to move far enough away from the car that the corral fence was now in his path, and he stood with both hands wrapped around its top railing, digging his fingers into the splintered board. The wood was clammy and wet, and Cas couldn’t see anything past his hands, white and clenched on the blackened plank, rimed with frost. His grip, he saw numbly, mirrored Hannah’s pose on the creek bridge. Was he, too, going to be _done_? Was he going to decide to stop doing it? What was it? Would they ever let him stop? Could he?

Sam stood a slight distance behind him, near enough to be reassuring but not touching him or getting any closer, as if not wanting to threaten him, respecting his apparent need for space. Cas could feel his kindness and wanted to respond.

“I’m sorry,” he tried to say aloud, but instead could only drop his head on his arms, because his chest was cramping and his coat sleeves felt damp against his face and it was so, so cold, he was so cold.

“I’m sorry,” he tried again. This time audible but choked off. “I didn’t mean, I never meant—”

“It’s fine—just don’t freak out on me, alright? I mean, you’re under a lot of…a lot of pressure, and shit has been weird for a long time—for the _entire_ time—” he broke off, trying to laugh, or not laugh, Cas couldn’t tell.

Someone, Cas thought, couldn’t breathe properly. He concentrated on helping them, one ragged inhalation at a time, in and out, in and out.

“You gotta take it easy, okay? It just—surprised me, because I always assumed that you were, that you had—I just always thought it’d be you and Dean—”

Here Sam wisely stopped, because Cas had doubled over, hands still gripping the railing, face turned down toward the ground, shoulders shaking, sobbing silently.

“Shit,” Sam said, horrified, and then clapped a hand over his own mouth.

Cas stifled the sounds, noises that wanted to be ugly, loud, open-mouthed cries or even screams—instead the sobs shook his chest, hurt his ribcage and were frightening.

He could still sense Sam behind him, staying at that same safe distance, radiating comforting hands-off compassion the way only Sam could do. No, Cas told himself, desperate for air but afraid to open his mouth—no, that wasn’t true. Dean could also be compassionate. But Sam’s sense of empathy was on your own timetable, whereas Dean’s compassion was rough and hands-on, more like: _I’m helping you right the fuck now because I can’t stand to watch you like this_.—

His knees felt watery and kept trying to buckle, but his forehead pressed hard against his crossed arms and held him upright as his body contracted. Maybe everything wanted to come out, like what Dean called _puking_ , or like an exorcism—maybe this was part of his becoming _done_ —the noises had to escape to leave you clean inside. But he would not let them out.

If Cas opened his mouth right now, he knew (biting down on the coat fabric of his forearm) that he would say Dean’s name, and then nothing would stay inside ever again.

Gradually the spasms started to feel less violent. He coughed, gasped for breath, spat out ropy saliva, became aware of Sam pressing one hand against his back, concerned—

“…and you’ve been going through some big stuff. I mean, you _fell_. Plus you should know, when I finally got away from Dad and—well, my first couple of years of college were pretty wild, so don’t worry, it’s not like I haven’t ever—it’s gonna be fine, okay? I promise. It’s no big deal. Just, don’t you think you should talk to Dean? I don’t think he even—”

Cas wheeled on him, face still dripping, eyes blazing, feeling a sudden white-hot flare of wrath. “No, Sam. _No_.”

Despite everything, he must have looked forbidding because Sam put his hands up and took two quick steps backward. “Okay, alright. But we’re not talking about the sharpest tool in the emotional shed here, you realize that, right? It’s _Dean_. He might need a little–”

Cas heard himself make a low, miserable, wordless noise, involuntarily, like a kicked dog, that ended in an unexpected growl. “Don’t. You don’t.”

Their eyes met then, over the incandescence of the car headlights, and Cas saw Sam finally get it.

His hands slowly came down.

“Okay,” he said, nodding, not taking his eyes from Cas’s face. “I sort of guessed. And I get that he’ll probably never be able to, to man up to it. But—Jesus, Cas, I’m sorry, it must—you must feel—”

Cas shook his head, slinging tears from both eyes and palming them off his cheeks and dragging the back of his hand under his chin. He spat again to one side, then wiped his mouth.

“It wasn’t a problem before,” he said hoarsely, “even when I fell. For years, I could always hold everything. It’s never been like this, until—since Metatron. When Metatron said—when he told me Dean was dead, it got worse and I couldn’t stop it, it felt like the end of everything, Sam, and it was the worst and then I couldn’t hold it, I couldn’t stop. And now it’s like this all the time. The only way it isn’t is if I can—what I think you’d call, shutting down completely. Down to nothing. Which I’m not sure I can keep doing.” His throat constricted and he made an uncontrolled, spasmodic gesture with his right hand.

Sam’s pupils flared in alarm, as though Cas were still capable of smiting, and he shrank back from him still farther, until he hit the grill of the Continental, headlights making beams in the soft dust he’d stirred up.

“Wait, so—that’s why you left.” His eyes suddenly comprehending. “When I woke up the next day you were gone, and all Dean said—”

“He doesn't know and he cannot,” Castiel cut him off clearly. “Not ever.”

To imagine even for an instant how Dean would react left him queasy and unmoored, and angry with himself. No matter how often Dean prayed, or said “I need you,” it wasn’t the same for him. Even before Cas had left the bunker this time, when Dean’s face briefly softened and he’d said “I’m glad you’re here, man,” Cas didn’t let himself think it meant anything beyond gratitude. He had become so used to reinterpreting such statements that he no longer did so consciously. _I’m glad you’re here,_ to him, simply meant it was his cue to go. And no one ever stopped him. No one ever called out and asked him to come back.

No, this story was going to have one of Metatron’s unhappy endings. Whatever existence Cas had remaining, it would have to include ample personal space around Dean Winchester.

Cas walked back toward the still-running car. He reached inside and snapped off the ignition, then leaned against the driver’s side door at right angles from Sam, a cautious distance, and crossed his arms over his chest, pressing down. He didn’t dare think too closely about what he’d just done, much less admitted aloud.

The kiss didn’t feel either wrong or right. Some part of him even still wanted it again, or something like it, something he’d only imagined.

(Sam’s mouth had felt more right than Hannah’s, not only yielding, but firm and strong. The surprise of that made something powerful surge up in him, a vehement need for he didn’t know what—to push, grab, assume, demand things, insist on them, take them—to feel someone giving way beneath his hands as he shoved or moved them, as if it were a fight; or as if, as before, he stood shoulder to shoulder with his garrison in the thick of battle—)

“Are you sure, Cas?”

Cas was tempted to quote himself from a conversation long ago: _Don’t ask stupid questions_.

“Because I honestly think he might—”

“Sam. Shut up.”

They stood there for several millennia, waiting for it to be okay again.

Cars passed on the two-lane, making damp rushing sounds. Cas closed his eyes, seeing behind the lids.

Purgatory. The increasing pull of those prayers so painful to resist, going against every instinct; it worsened almost by the hour, as though the longer Cas stayed away, the more focused Dean had become on finding him, rather than forgetting the way he was supposed to do. Cas had felt it every time Dean pinned some monster down, snarling into its face: _Where’s the angel?_

What he’d done just now—it _was_ about his ill-gotten grace. As it drained away, he wasn’t merely becoming weak or ill: it also grew harder to contain his more human impulses. 

He had to stay away from Dean. He had to stay as far away as he could, while still helping.

Cas opened his eyes and squared his shoulders. It was time to be a friend.

He could be a good friend. He was like family, Dean had said; like a brother to him. _Always happy to bleed for the Winchesters._ He could do this, could be for them what he had failed to be for Balthazar, for Gabriel, for any of his brothers and sisters. He could be family.

“Sam, forgive me,” he said, not looking at him, his voice rasping. “I apologize. That was impulsive and I hope you won’t hold my…behavior against me.”

Sam seemed to understand that hastening to reassure him was not what Cas needed. He kept still, letting him say whatever he needed to say.

Castiel straightened his coat around himself and dusted his hands together, ignoring the splinters and scraped palms. He would take care of them later.

“It may be possible to help Dean, but we need to speak with Cain. As far as I know, the only way to be rid of the Mark is to transfer it to another living human, or a demon. Otherwise I would have taken it myself. It’s possible I might be able to _move it_ , if that makes sense, but I cannot actually _keep it_.” He hesitated. “If anyone knows of a solution, it will be Cain.”

He turned to open the car door, willing strength into his legs. It occurred to him that he should probably be drinking water and eating, to say nothing of sleeping, as Crowley’s installment of stolen grace began to waver.

His throat hurt. “I will go there now, and call you when I know more. Goodbye, Sam.”

“Cas, wait.” Sam pulled car keys out of his own pocket, jingling them while he thought, staring off into the darkened pasture. He had to drive back, Cas realized, before Dean woke. “I just—I need to say this, okay? Two things.”

Cas felt his head drift to one side, tilted to listen as if he were still himself, instead of what he felt like: a wreck, hollow and useless and stupid, a wrong thing in a right world. But he would not be in it for long. He tried to pay attention.

“First, and I really want you to get this—we’re good, you and me, okay? Whatever that was, it’s—it’s totally understandable. You’ve helped us so much, even when you had all kinds of other craziness going on. I _know_ what it’s like to have Lucifer fucking with your head, but you still took him in. And I—I’ll always remember the day I met you. It was the most amazing moment, even though, well...” He smiled and looked down, still embarrassed.

Cas surprised himself by laughing, once. “My people skills were…nonexistent.”

Sam acknowledged this with a twist of his head. “Yeah, well, a lot’s gone down since then. So we’ve _both_ changed. You’re a good man. Or seraph, or whatever you are—but you’re always _you_ , Cas, that’s all I need to know. So don’t beat yourself up about it.”

Cas forced something back down, swallowing hard as Sam continued.

“Here’s the other thing—actually, Lucifer made me think of it. What if _I_ took the Mark?” He grimaced as if expecting protest, but Cas merely narrowed his eyes and kept listening.

“I’m stronger than Dean,” Sam said, hunching down into his jacket, hair slipping beneath the collar. “You know why. I can resist it longer—plus it took a while for the Mark to really dig into him, to have its full effect. That could buy even more time. You talk to Cain, find out how to get rid of it for good. I’ll research as much as I can, until it gets—until I can’t. Dean can lock me away if he has to—fuck, it wouldn’t be the first time.”

Cas stared at him, let go of the door handle. “He would never let you do this, Sam. He’d have to be unconscious, or restrained, and the transfer might not work without his consent.”

“We should still try. It’s not just that he’s fighting again, it’s also—uh, this part may not be easy to hear?” Sam hesitated, shoving his fists deeper into his pockets.

“I know Dean very well,” he answered, looking off toward the forgotten, dull-colored hay bales, as though averting his gaze might make it easier for Sam to speak. “Whatever the truth is, you can say it.” Nothing, he thought, could hurt any worse. Of course he’d thought that before, standing brittle and paused outside Dean’s bedroom door, hoping to be called back, to be wanted. Probably it could always hurt worse.

Sam shifted, kicked the toe of one boot at a tuft of frost-bitten grass. “So he’s always just gone out pretty often and, well, picked up women, or whatever—I never ask, I don’t want to know. But now he’s on, like, a _dating_ website, I can’t fucking believe it—using his _real name_? And then he goes on this date, which turns out to be—and then we wind up dealing with _witches_?” Sam shook his hair back in frustration.

“I don’t like seeing him this…pathetic,” he continued, scowling. “It’s _sad_. He’s not a kid anymore—he’s thirty- _five_ , and it’s not like he can exactly be honest about what he does for a living, or bring someone home to the bunker to meet the folks for Sunday dinner—I can’t either, we both know this, it’s part of the life.”

“The Mark can cause…indiscrimination,” Cas agreed quietly. He wasn’t one to be judgmental about libidinous appetites at the moment, but as Colette probably could have concurred, Dean’s weren’t going to diminish.

On the contrary.

Sam blew out a breath. “That’s what I thought. Plus if you’d seen him going after Cole. It wasn’t demonic, or merciless, just— _methodical_. And the way he said that—”

“As if he’s given up.”

“Somehow, yeah, he has. His eyes were so fucking _empty_ , I nearly dropped my gun.”

Suddenly Sam seemed, as he sometimes still did, incredibly young. At first Castiel hadn’t understood that vulnerability, had mistaken it for weakness and been dismissive. Now he knew better; knew Sam’s heart, how it flooded over with tenderness for his brother.

Sam shook himself, straightened and walked over to the Impala. Then he turned, and he and Cas just looked at each other a moment. Ridiculously, Cas missed him already, just from Sam’s walking twenty feet away. He wanted to be close enough to someone to feel their body heat, line up his bones with theirs, match palm to palm, press forehead to forehead. He’d thought the loneliness would go away, once he was no longer human. But it was worse. He missed Sam, which was strange because he was still standing right there.

He missed Dean like burning. But he always did.

“So I’m asking you—follow me back and let’s try it first, before you go to Cain. Dean wants to keep working this case with the witches but I can’t trust him not to do something stupid. I need you on this one. Let’s get this fucking thing off him and onto me for a while.” Sam coughed, and looked down.

“And Cas—for whatever it’s worth, if you honestly don’t know by now, he really does—”

•

But Sam was speaking to air, because the Continental’s undercarriage was already scraping across the gravel, kicking out pebbles behind as it crawled ungainly up onto the glistening blacktop and then sat there waiting, exuding impatience.

Sam rolled his eyes (whether Dean had rubbed off so much on Cas or Cas had always been an annoying brother, either way he often wanted to kick them both into next week); but at least Cas was going back with him.

The best thing about stealing Dean’s ride, Sam decided, yawning and flopping down into the Impala, was that he got to play actual music. He’d left in too much of a hurry to grab his iPod, and the stations all crackled but eventually he found a song he’d half-heard in a bar, a snapping wordy lament twisted inside nagging, circling blues. Sam tapped his thumb on the steering wheel without noticing ( _this is not the way you realize what you wanted / it’s a bit too much too late if I'm honest_ ).

He checked in the side mirror, flecked with drizzle; Cas was tailing him but at a polite, drivers-ed-approved distance. Sam sped up until the Continental followed more closely.

The two cars slurred off into the rain.

•

Dean didn’t like waking up in general, but his third least favorite way to wake up involved finding out that people who had been there when he passed out were now not there.

“The fuck did you go, Sammy,” he accused the empty room; but his heart wasn’t really in it, and being a stone-cold weirdo, Sam sometimes went running first thing in the morning—even when it was still dark, which was just made of wrong. Dean rolled back over and buried his face in the pillow, adjusting himself in his boxer briefs so he could lie facedown and feeling momentarily frustrated all over again that Shaylene had turned out to be _tricking,_ for a goddamned crossroads demon no less, and then Sam had made him erase his online profile.

(“Dean, what were you even—do you not _know_ how many people are after us?”

“Oh come on—how would they find it? It’s a dating app, not the police blotter.”

Sam had dropped his head into both hands and muttered something about technophobes being the end of the Winchester lineage, because Dean was removing them from the gene pool by not understanding how search engines worked. “Did you notice _Cole_ found you? Also I’m not so sure this particular app is for, how can I put this, actual _dating_ as such?”

“Fine,” he'd groused, “I’ll delete it, but I’m gonna set up another one with the username princesssammylovesmylittlepony, so get ready for a bunch of _groovy_ new friends.” Sam did not seem nearly as intimidated by this prospect as Dean felt he should be.)

Dean scrunched the top sheet up around his face, then dropped off thinking how easy it had been to get laid as a demon. He dreamed the blonde triplets danced with him to Pat Benatar, and then, without transition, in the way of dreams, he was up against the wall in the unisex bathroom and the cutest triplet was down between his knees, smiling wickedly up at him and giving him a very wet enthusiastic blowjob, until Crowley burst in. And then the dream changed again and Dean was trying to hustle pool but the pool table for no good reason was set up in a cornfield, and the sun was so bright he couldn’t see to squint down along the cue stick, so he was losing, and becoming more and more angry, until finally he snapped the cue in half across his knee and chased the triplets around the table, trying to impale one—

This time when he woke, it was his second least favorite way, which was because someone was standing over him, staring down.

(His _most_ least favorite way to wake up was being shot in the chest, which fortunately he’d only experienced once, although that had been enough to leave an indelible impression.)

At least Cas was doing the staring, which he was almost used to by now.

He tried to glare with his one open eye. “Take a picture, they last longer,” he mumbled, curling back down into the covers; then both eyes flew open and he pressed up off the mattress abruptly, because Cas had clearly been— _crying?_

His eyes were red and swollen, his lips dry as usual. He looked dehydrated, but more than that, destroyed. One hand rested unobtrusively on the nightstand, subtly propping himself up. His hair was old-school disheveled, the way Dean hadn’t seen it in years.

“Cas, what the hell happened to you?” He looked around the room wildly. “Where’s Sam?”

Cas laughed, a thing he did more often now, but it sounded bitter. “Hello, Dean.”

“Dude, I’m right here, everything’s fine,” said Sam from the doorway, throwing the car keys down onto the table and shucking off his jacket. “Cas’ll explain. I’ve gotta pass out for a while, but he’s staying. He’ll tell you. About all the things. And the…other things.”

Sam kicked off his boots and then rolled himself up in the bedspread like a burrito, without undressing or bothering to get under the sheets.

Dean looked back at Cas, scowling. “Let me guess: Metatron’s escaped and is on his way to Hollywood to take over all the movie studios. Or, no, wait: you decide to grace us with your presence because some kind of apocalyptic angel shitshow’s about to come down on our heads.”

He immediately regretted being snarky. Cas had shadows under his eyes almost the same color as those impossible irises and wrinkles where Dean couldn’t remember ever seeing wrinkles before. Even his coat looked tired.

Cas held up a hand in warning; Sam was already breathing deeply. “Let’s go elsewhere.” His voice rasped more painfully than usual and Dean wondered if they had fresh juice at the breakfast bar or just that from-concentrate crap.

“Fine,” said Dean, “Just—just gimme a second, okay?”

For a moment Cas’s nose wrinkled in feline confusion, and it was as if he were still so new that he was on the verge of asking why Dean required an additional brief increment of time, and how he expected Castiel to supply it.

Then his mouth thinned; Cas nodded, shortly, and walked out.

Dean rolled his eyes and threw back the covers. Maybe an angel would be unfazed by the sight of another dude’s morning wood, but Dean felt he himself would have been traumatized by having to walk past Cas with a ninety-degree boner.

He tucked himself into his jeans, zipping them up cautiously. There was exactly one clean t-shirt left in his duffle; he picked it over a not-quite-as-clean henley, absently rubbing the Mark after the fabric brushed across it. It tended to ache more in the mornings, almost as if it had grown more belligerent overnight.

In the bathroom, Dean ran wet hands through his hair to make it lie down, toothbrush stuck in a corner of his mouth, the song from his dream still stuck in his head ( _you’re the right kind of sinner / to release my inner fantasy_ ). With an expertise born of years, Sam had thoroughly disinfected and taped up his facial cuts, and Dean healed fast, probably because of the Mark; so he pulled the tape off gingerly, the better not to terrify the locals.

Unthinking he pressed himself, half-erect, against the cool porcelain edge of the sink, which helped keep the thought from surfacing that in fact he hadn’t been erect when he woke—that he had only started getting hard, that his heart had only begun to swell inexplicably, filling slowly as if with sweet rainwater, when Sam had said: _he’s staying._

•

When Dean left the motel room he walked straight into Cas, who’d been standing right by the door waiting for him, and had turned as soon as he heard the door open—which meant their chests ricocheted off each other and Dean fell back into the room again, while Cas wound up staggering a few steps out into the parking lot.

He glared at Dean, who glared back, until apparently Dean decided neither of them was actually to blame.

He laughed and clapped Cas on the shoulder. “Come on, angel. Pancakes on me.”

The diner adjacent to the motel was busy despite the early hour; every booth packed with humans, talking, laughing, gesturing. There were no available seats so they had to stand for a while next to the jukebox, as the front door opened and closed, bells jingling.

Cas studied the jukebox’s song titles with interest, asking about different musicians or bands, most of whom made Dean roll his eyes, though as far as Cas could tell, despite Dean’s opinion, they were nonetheless very popular. When seats opened up at the counter, Dean waved a couple ahead of them, preferring always to wait for a booth. It fascinated Cas that Dean never minded waiting; never complained or tried to use his natural assertiveness to go before others, behavior Cas had witnessed frequently during his days as a sales associate.

One of Dean’s more unusual and useful human qualities, Cas reflected, was in fact his patience—which few people saw, as it was particular only to certain situations. He was impatient with speech of more than a few words, elaborations of any kind, and delays once a course of action had been chosen. But when it came to studying a car part, trying to figure out why it was malfunctioning, or waiting until after the second cup of coffee to hear bad news, Dean’s equanimity and good humor were unrivaled.

Cas also happened to know that as frequently and feelingly as Dean complained about research, his persistence as a hunter actually made him dogged and wily when it came to digging up hard-to-track-down information.

After they’d been seated and had worked their way rapidly through breakfast (Cas wasn’t actually very interested in the pancakes but it seemed rude to refuse them), he looked up to find Dean grinning at him over what was apparently a third cup of coffee, judging from his expression.

“Dean, I would like to ask you something.”

Dean made as grand a permissive gesture as the vinyl booth of the diner would allow.

“Why do you pretend that you’re stupid?”

Dean’s smile didn’t waver, but took on a slightly strained quality. “Dude, what are you talking about. We both know you’re the dumbass around here.”

Cas felt a strange desire to provoke him into reacting. “I’ve always assumed it had something to do with your father, but couldn’t be certain. As with your compulsive defensive mechanisms, however, such as distracting, deflecting, your aggressively overcompensatory heteronormativity and your being completely shame-bound, I assumed John probably also viewed your intelligence as a personal threat to him, and so, as with other traits, you had to hide it from—”

“Cas,” interrupted Dean, sounding only slightly murderous. “First of all, this is not our fifty-minute weekly therapy hour. And second, trust me, you do not even want to start with my dad. Just do _not_ go there.”

Dean was still smiling but his eyes had taken on the fixed fraternal expression which meant: this is your first and only warning. Cas briefly considered trying to stare him down, press him into an actual disclosure of some sort; but very likely the only result of that would be to increase certain sensations and cravings that Castiel already couldn’t handle. 

The present difficulty Dean’s intelligence posed was that he’d immediately know why Sam’s taking the Mark was a reasonable temporary solution; yet his perpetual denial of his own rationality meant he would also throw himself off a cliff to keep Sam from doing exactly that. Cas looked out the diner window, wondering how to introduce the topic without having Dean walk out, or worse.

Across the street, the shops were still closed, presumably because it was so early in the morning, or maybe for the weekend. Most of the buildings, actually, looked not only closed but abandoned. He’d heard people in diners like this one across the country speak bitterly of a depressed economy, and he supposed this was evidence of its collapse, these smudged broken windows through which he could see jumbled, dusty inventory, not considered valuable enough even to steal. They were in a town called Troy, but it bore no resemblance to Ilion as he remembered it, the terrible armies in bronze and vermillion. Instead it reminded him of parts of heaven: deserted, neglected, in rubble.

“ _Overcompensatory_ for chrissake,” Dean muttered under his breath, shaking his head and opening another packet of sugar, “I so do not need this. Just bring me up to speed. Exactly what kind of heavenly devastation are we talking about this time?”

Cas hesitated and dragged his fork through the pancake syrup. He had to think of a way to explain Sam’s plan without rendering Dean apoplectic.

He especially shouldn’t think about having kissed Sam; or, actually, kissing at all.

Of course, having had that thought, now kissing was the only thing he could think about.

Dean raised an eyebrow, waiting. Cas surprised himself by imagining vividly what it would be like to bite down on that pursed lower lip, rose-colored, soft, delicious. He crumpled his napkin into a ball in his lap, and clenched his fingers in it.

 _I’m far more impatient than Dean_ , he thought, startled _. Much more. Even though he’s human. And I’ve_ always _been that way: impulsive, irritable, even rebellious—Naomi was right, I came off the line like this. Why did my father make me so? These reckless feelings—they’re_ not _just because I don’t have much time left._

Of course, in his exhaustion he’d said the last part aloud and Dean’s eyebrows shot up. “ _That’s_ why you’re here? What do you mean, 'not much time left'? How the hell much time is ‘not much’?”

Without entirely meaning to, Cas stopped listening as Dean responded to Cas’s revelation characteristically: by blaming him, so he wouldn’t have to feel loss of control or fear. “Dammit, why didn’t you tell me earlier? You just _took_ off that night, I didn’t even know—why is _this_ the first frigging time I’m hearing about this, you just vanish and then the next thing I know you're—”

But by this point Cas had tuned out completely and was studying the starburst pattern in the broken window of a half-emptied hardware store on the other side of the street. Garden tools leaned at crazy angles against the window on its other side. The fractured glass glittered in the early morning sunlight like Indra’s jewels. _Damaged things_ , he thought, _had such unbearable beauty_.

He looked back at Dean, who was now pointing directly at him and informing him presumably in no uncertain terms that Cas’s dying was all his own damn fault and he couldn’t expect anyone to feel sorry for him. Dean’s stubble was reddish in the same bright light, a very few silver hairs in with the rest that hadn’t been there when Cas had remade him. Probably Dean didn’t even know about them yet.

Cas looked into his eyes, the color of the [summerfields around Reykjavík](http://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/skogar-folk-museum-turf-houses-with-grass-roofs-iceland-news-photo/154507374), or the [lush Ngorongoro caldera](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ngorongoro_Conservation_Area#mediaviewer/File:Ngorongoro_Crater_Panorama.jpg). He smiled at Dean, having absolutely no idea what he was saying. Only his face mattered. 

And, just like that, Cas was _done_.

Was this how it had been for Hannah? One moment, trying so hard to be good and of service and do the responsible thing; the next moment, so liberated it felt like flying even with your feet on the ground?

He had stopped serving heaven years ago, to fight alongside the Winchesters. Even when he had continued to aid heaven, secretly he did so always trying to work some angle so that Dean and Sam could be safe.

He hadn’t found free will after all; he’d just found new archangels.

What would it be like to do as he wanted, without trying to protect Dean from everything?

Dean was, unbelievably, still expostulating as Cas shuffled through causality and parameters and small changes in initial conditions and discrete variables and outcomes and consequences, all at the speed of orbiting electrons, discarding trajectories one by one until he arrived at the only terminus:

Why even _try_ to keep Dean from, as he would put it, flipping out. No matter what Castiel had ever done, he had never been able to stop Dean from being upset and oppositionally defiant. So let him. Let him rail against Cas’s fading grace, and dislike his and Sam’s plan, and resist everything.

Let him resist as much as he wanted. Approaching expiration date or not, Cas could handle him. He’d done it before—welding his arms around a roaring black-eyed demon, unyielding, glowing with purpose.

Besides, maybe he wanted Dean to resist. Maybe he _wanted_ to have to handle him.

In that moment, Castiel’s decision had been made for him. He apologized inwardly to Sam for how badly this was probably about to go. But he truly didn’t have much time, and his self-control grew more frayed with every moment he spent near Dean. He didn’t have the energy anymore for secrets.

He leaned forward across the formica tabletop, fixing Dean with his scrutiny until he stopped in mid-diatribe. Cas could still refrain from blinking, when he chose, and right now he so chose. He wondered if Dean realized that Cas saw so much more deeply than clear cornea, pigmented iris, lens, vitreous humor, retina.

“Oh, no—not now, man, no way. Can we skip the staring contest? I have a feeling there’s some other wonderful piece of news besides the fact that you’re freaking _dying,_ so why don’t you spit it out,” Dean snapped, slamming down his cup so that coffee slopped over the side onto the table.

Without turning his head or using his hands, Cas wafted paper napkins from the dispenser and dropped them on top of the spill. He didn’t care if anyone in the diner saw.

“You told me once,” he began, in a barely audible voice that would force Dean to lean forward if he wanted to hear, “no one cared if I were broken. That I had to clean up my mess anyway. Well, we made a mess, you and I, together. So now we have to clean up this one too, and no one cares how we feel about it. Or how you feel.”

Dean stared at him for a moment and then huffed out a laugh. “Very helpful, Cas. Maximum points to Slytherin for being all vague and _mysterious_. That really cleared everything up for me. So we’re done talking about your imminent demise, I take it. Guess I’m not the only one who distracts and deflects.” He leaned back against the vinyl seat and slung one arm across the top of it, upper lip curling slightly. “But if you’re talking about the Mark?—that’s not your mess to clean up. I did it, I’ll deal with it, I’m handling it, end of story. If it takes me down, well, it’s not your fucking problem.”

“As you also once said to me: that’s not how I see it.”

“Oh yeah? Well, too bad, because the Mark is none of your business. Step off, Cas.”

Cas suspected his facial expression at that moment probably resembled one of Sam’s. Their eyes locked and this time Cas refused to look away.

A waitress in yellow uniform came by, coffee pot poised, to offer a warm-up. “How we doing?” she kept repeating, nonplussed by the two men glaring at each other and ignoring her, then finally gave up, timidly sliding the check under the rim of Cas’s plate and all but backing away.

This time Cas deepened his voice into a growl.

“It _is_ my business, Dean. Not least because I was too preoccupied with heaven, and not near enough to you and Sam to know what was going on when you made that particular…decision.”

Dean snorted, and shoved the wet paper napkins to one side. “Hey, you were a big important cult leader with a big important angel cult to run; no time to chat with puny hairless apes about their trivial little Knight of _Hell_ problems. Gotta peace out when heaven calls, I get it. I’m used to that from you.”

As Dean’s words became more barbed, Cas felt increasingly pleased about his new approach.

He leaned even more closely, spoke even lower.

“Then tell me: what is _your_ plan, Dean? You intend to stifle these urges for the rest of your life? Has it occurred to you that you will unconsciously be shortening that life?”

Dean laughed unpleasantly. “ _My_ life, man. Really not sure what it has to do with you.”

“Cain was a powerful demon, but even for the love of Colette he could not restrain himself. Even if you are”—here, Cas indulged himself in vicious air quotes—“the _Righteous Man_ , the _world’s greatest hunter_ , you cannot control this. You will kill, or _worse_ ; and then you will die.”

Dean’s jaw tightened but his eyes grew brighter, in a way Cas associated with an imminent fistfight. His voice when he spoke was almost cheerful. “Yep, and as we’ve established: that’s on me. So what is it, Cas? Is this just about recharging your batteries, or do you want something else, because I have enough juice to tell you up front: I am not in the mood for games.” He shoved back from the table, dangerously expressionless.

Castiel laughed softly, remembering what it was like to frighten people. He rather missed that. “Oh, is that what we’re doing? Are we playing a _game_ , Dean? And it’s not the kind of game you like?”

Dean shot him one level look before standing abruptly, reaching down into the booth for his jacket. “You know what: fuck you. I don’t need this. If I wanted creepy innuendo, I’d go find Crowley.”

He opened his wallet to fling down some bills, and then leaned over again, fists on the table, face inches away from Cas’s. “After everything we’ve been through, after fucking _Purgatory_ , I thought by now you’d level with me. Or just tell me to my face you’re gonna work for yourself and you don’t care what I think—but either way, _stop_ jerking me off.” He flushed at his own words and compressed his lips, but turned and stalked away.

Cas started to get up and follow, then paused. He didn’t have enough grace to smite, or use his wings; nor could he have sent anyone flying backward through the air. But he could keep one irritated human from moving forward.

He waited until he heard the bells on the front door jingle—and then he reached out with his mind and lightly arrested Dean’s movement, locking him in place.

Methodically, he folded his napkin, placed it neatly next to his plate, gathered his coat and slung it over one arm, and smoothed the front of his dress shirt as he walked toward the door. By the register he stopped and took two mints from a dish, thanking the cashier. Dean hated peppermints, but Sam liked them.

Pausing before the jukebox to unwrap his candy, he saw where Dean had stopped, or more accurately been stopped: on the sidewalk about a dozen feet from the diner, where an elderly couple sat on a metal park bench. Without looking he selected a song at random and started it playing, dropping his head to one side to listen, their [many voices blended together like one](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9aju9u2KB4), yearning toward some unknown beloved— _I came home like a stone / and I fell heavy into your arms / these days of dust which we’ve known / will blow away with this new sun_ —

Cas also noted the tension in Dean’s back muscles and, even without seeing his face, knew to his immense satisfaction that Dean was absolutely furious.

•

”Please excuse us,” Cas said gravely to the two anxious ladies on the bench, who immediately understood and hurried off, dragging with them an equally anxious tiny dog on its leash. He put Sam’s mint in his back pocket, finished crunching his own (how could Dean not like them? they were like sugary disks of toothpaste, which he also loved), and, maneuvering around Dean, turned to face him.

His eyes spat murder, and Cas smiled in approval.

“The plan has changed, Dean. Here’s how it would have gone: I was going to transfer the Mark from you to Sam, with or without your permission, to buy time while I went back to Cain and figured out our next step as far as eliminating it from humanity for good.”

Here Dean’s nostrils flared and Cas figured right about now, hands would be closing around his throat if Dean weren’t pinned in place.

A teenaged girl ran across the parking lot in the diner’s yellow uniform, obviously late to work, pausing to stub out her cigarette in one of the large clay pots holding frostbitten purple kale. Judging from the number of butts sticking out of the sandy soil, either this was her daily ritual or perhaps she wasn’t the only one abusing the ornamental plants. She edged past, eyeing the two of them and drawling something Cas didn’t catch. He ignored her in favor of continuing to enjoy Dean’s impotent, wordless rage, while also deploying his irises at Dean, using them to emit a near-ultraviolet frequency, invisible yet unsettling to humans. He’d been doing this for years, creating every kind of distraction.

It had been a long time, though, since he’d had derived this much pleasure from it. To Cas’s satisfaction, Dean wetted his lower lip with his tongue, still looking livid but also now aroused.

Cas could feel his own control fraying. Maybe holding Dean in place hadn’t been the best idea. It would for once be possible to touch him, even momentarily, and Castiel wanted that badly. He had so little self-discipline left. With what felt like the last of it, he leaned forward and said directly into Dean’s ear:

“But here’s what’s happening now: _Sam_ goes to see Cain, to ask the questions. And I’m staying here—” he leaned in closer still, his hair brushing the side of Dean's face, rewarded by an almost imperceptible shiver—“to watch over you. Because _you_ can’t be trusted… _Dean_.”

Unhurried, Cas pulled out his phone and texted Sam, making sure Dean could see what he wrote. _When you wake, take either car and go to Cain. Do it now. Don’t ask questions. Call from the road, I’ll explain. Dean is safe. I’m taking him to the bunker._

He pressed “send” and studied Dean’s flushed face again. “You know, you are selfish in the most deceptive way,” he said conversationally, slipping his trench coat back on so he wasn’t carrying it. He had a feeling he’d be needing a full range of motion as soon as Dean could move again.

“Over and over you commit to behaving stupidly, still so loyal to John Winchester that you don’t dare show your intelligence, lest this prove his estimation of you wrong, and betray him. As if continuing to perform your valuelessness, years after his death, could work backward through time to reaffirm his authority. When you could _never_ have gotten it right, Dean, not then and not now. Not only because you _are_ worthy of love and belonging, despite yourself; and not only because you _are_ exceptionally intelligent, despite yourself; but because your father failed his _own_ expectations, of intelligence and worthiness and male adulthood, and then displaced all of that discomfort and pain. Onto _you_.”

As Cas spoke, his voice turning fierce and protective, Dean managed to avert his face. Wetness trembled on his lashes, and Cas felt a shadow cross his own heart, a sliver of cold which must be nothing next to the dark eclipse into which John had cast his firstborn, telling himself the entire time, no doubt, that everything he said and did was for Dean’s own good.

It grew harder to hold Dean in place the more upset he became. With his shredded grace under the additional strain, Cas became overwhelmingly conscious of Dean’s skin, the blood simmering beneath its thin surface, its nearness beneath layers of clothing, rough and silky and coarse and fine, all the nerve-rich textures of it. If he were going to flay Dean with his words, remove his emotional protective layer, he at least owed it to him to put his skin back together with touch, to rebalance the cortisol and epinephrine with oxytocin and vasopressin.

It was cruel, malicious even, to say all at once everything he had spent years not saying. But Cas had only this chance, so he pressed on, his voice angry gravel.

“Know that you can never be stupid enough, or worthless enough, or _manly_ enough, whatever that means to you, to validate what your father told you about yourself. To conform to the limits he set. Because none of it, not a word of it, was ever true. Yet you continue to try, your loyalty to his abuse is astonishing—you repeatedly make pigheaded decisions while telling yourself, implausibly, that the people who love you” ( _the_ people _, Dean, the people, plural_ ) “will not be affected by your loss. How can it possibly surprise you that, once again, I refuse to let you do that?”

He lifted one hand, not missing Dean’s flinch, pressing his palm deliberately against Dean’s sternum, hard enough to feel his heart's uneven pounding through the cotton of his shirt. “As long as I exist to do so, I am _always_ going to raise you from your self-created hell, no matter how many times you hurl yourself down into it. I am always going to come after you, no matter how much you struggle, no matter how little you think you deserve to be saved.”

Cas shuttered his eyes, finally, and felt Dean sag in place. He drew his hand away slowly, dragging it down Dean’s ribcage to his waist, where he permitted it to rest for half a second. His voice softened, turned silken and hot.

“You know, Jacob limped for the rest of his life after he wrestled me. You should show me some respect.”

He reached up to the collar of his dress shirt and unhurriedly undid the top two buttons, noting the pale ring around Dean’s mouth as his lips clamped together, hard.

That should do it.

He walked away without looking at Dean again and tried to make sure he was some distance from the motel diner, at least well clear of all the glass windows and doors, before he let the Righteous Man go.

He’d lied to Sam in the text message, of course; he knew he had almost no chance of persuading Dean to return with him to the bunker. He only hoped he would be safely away from bystanders before Dean caught up to him, and before the first entirely original idea of Cas’s life took hold.

As it happened, he barely made it to the edge of the parking lot before he felt the angel blade cold against his throat.

The nearness and gentleness of Dean’s voice in his ear made his eyelids flutter shut.

“You know something, buddy? I gotta tell you, I don’t think too much of your fucking plan. Or you either, right now, for that matter.”

•

“Keep walking, angel,” Dean murmured, twisting Cas’s arm behind his back and frog-marching him across the street, not even trying to be unobtrusive as one car honked and another veered around them. “Let’s keep these poor local bastards out of it—it’s only you I have a problem with. And you playing amateur shrink. And especially your shitty fucking plan involving my brother.”

Cas couldn’t believe his new idea was already working out this well. He stiffened and pretended to be in discomfort from the wrenched arm, to be overpowered.

No one seemed particularly concerned that a member of the citizenry was being held at swordpoint. Sam had once articulated to Cas the idea of white male privilege and perhaps the principle was somehow operant in this case as well. 

He stumbled on purpose, felt the blade nick him and wetness drip down his neck, repressed a smile.

When they made it to the other side of the street, Dean half-dragged, half-shoved Cas down several storefronts to the end of the block, abruptly turning to kick in the door of the same hardware supply Cas had been staring at earlier. A strategically placed boot heel landed squarely next to the doorknob, and then Dean hauled him inside the dusty, cluttered space. 

The door slammed shut behind them and Cas tried not to exult.

For a third time, he was about to go after Dean Winchester with all his strength; and this being his last chance, he wasn’t going to back down from the outcome.

Dean spun Cas away from him, flipping his blade in the practiced way Castiel had taught him, getting a better grip on its cylindrical hilt, already slippery with sweat. But this wasn’t Dean, and Cas knew he could fight him even with grace in tatters, because the Mark wasn’t as smart as Dean, and it would cause him to make mistakes. Dean already couldn’t tear his eyes from the trickle of blood pooling at the base of Cas’s throat, and Cas knew the sight of it must be like gasoline on the Mark’s already blazing fire.

That small distraction was all he needed. With Dean’s gaze fastened helplessly to his opened collar, undershirt splattered with red, Castiel let his own angel blade drop down into his hand, and he sprang forward.

•

From the time Dean had the use of his muscles back, the Mark felt on fire, singeing itself again into the flesh of his arm like the day he’d first taken it from Cain.

The truth was he could barely see, other than directly in front of him. The Mark whited out the edges of things, helped him focus on the target and nothing else.

He became its sniper scope, its singleminded asset. The angel blade eased into his hand and he felt it vibrating in his grip, knew it would slice through grace like a warm knife through butter.

As if from the end of a tunnel, Dean watched his opponent charge ( _why was he fighting Cas? there must be a good reason_ ). His instincts told him simply to feint and step aside, but the part of him that craved intensity, craved violence, kept him riveted to the spot.

Accordingly, Cas plowed into him, and they both fell and skidded backward along the floor, crashing into a row of metal shelving which promptly collapsed on top of them.

Dean cursed, flailing beneath what seemed like endless yards of beige fabric, as Cas lifted off the shelving with one hand and threw it easily aside, grappling Dean down to the floor. 

“Fuck,” he spat, “that’s why you’ve kept that thing, it’s like a fucking spiderweb—”

“You talk all the time,” Cas panted, “but you never say anything important.” He chopped the side of his hand down onto Dean’s wrist, and Dean’s blade rolled away under the shelving, rattling as it turned over and over.

Dean didn’t care. The longer this took, the better, as far as he was concerned.

Dean seized advantage of Cas’s movement to shove him off balance and flip them. He lurched upright and hauled Cas back to his feet by both armpits, landing one really solid elbow to the jaw before Cas danced out of reach. Cas felt his molars crack together and tasted blood before regathering and launching himself again at Dean, leaping through the air heedlessly, as if he could still fly.

This time they skidded all the way to the other end of the store, where they crashed into what must have been, at one time, the sales counter.

Above them an ancient register dinged incongruously, and its cash drawer flew open.

“You don’t understand anything,” Cas breathed, pressing his blade into the tender area beneath Dean’s chin until he flinched and froze.

Cas ran his free hand through Dean’s hair, nails digging into the scalp. Dean swore and tried to twist away; Cas fisted his fingers into the hair at the nape of Dean’s neck, bending his head backward so Cas had easier access to nose at the pulse beneath his ear. Dean’s skin smelled like bay leaves, lawn clippings, marzipan. Surprising himself, helplessly, Castiel opened his mouth—

“Dude, the fuck is your _problem_ ,” Dean grunted; he locked his fists together and made solid crunching contact with Castiel’s nose, at which point Cas’s blade went flying and disappeared on the other side of the counter.

Losing his weapon left Cas with both hands free. He led from the hips, catching Dean in the face with an uppercut followed by two quick jabs to the solar plexus.

While Dean fought to catch his breath, Cas grabbed his wrists and shifted his whole weight forward onto them, holding him down, shoving his hips tight up against Dean’s.

“What the hell—stop it, Cas,” Dean wheezed, trying to buck him off.

Cas braced himself inwardly; this was where things could get grim. He was ready. He wasn’t going to stop. He pressed his mouth to Dean’s damp forehead, trailing down his temple, murmuring against the skin, “You always say you you’re fine, that you don’t need my help, when your body tells me something else—” 

What he wasn’t anticipating is that Dean would reflexively jerk his knee up into Castiel’s crotch. There were only had a few brisk inches to work with, but somehow Dean managed to make them count.

 _This is what they mean by seeing stars_ , Cas thought, before nausea blotted out his vision for a few seconds and he rolled off Dean onto his side, coughing and clawing at the floor.

Dean wavered to his feet and looked down, trying to smirk except that half his mouth was already swollen closed. “What, they didn't teach you dirty fighting upstairs? Nah, your brothers are all junkless. Guess you’re the exception. Didn’t know you cared, Cas.”

He bent, hands on his knees, and hauled Cas up again before delivering a friendly series of snapping punches to his face and torso. _Interesting,_ Cas thought, soldier’s mind remaining strategic despite the fact that this wasn’t combat. At his weight, Dean was normally a haymaker kind of guy, and yet these were almost decorative jabs. Why the change in style? Was some part of him trying to lose?

Cas shielded as best he could with his forearms, taking the blows and in the process getting backed up against some kind of spinning metal display case, which he inevitably knocked over. Puffs of dust rose around them, and the row of tools rattled against the window. Dean sneezed.

He felt only a little bad taking advantage of Dean’s allergies, so while the sneezing fit lasted Cas ducked in close, peppering Dean's ribs with blows and and finally just headbutting into him, barreling them both into a mouldering collection of cardboard filing boxes.

Pink, canary, and white triplicate invoices flew loose and fluttered down around them as Cas seized further advantage by attaching his mouth to Dean’s neck and licking at the salty skin underneath his ear, breathing, “You have no idea how much I care.”

Dean’s entire body recoiled, twitching and writhing to get out from under. “I said _stop it_ —”

He pulled an arm free and, as Cas turned his head to dodge the blow, still caught him in the ear. Dean managed to get his legs back underneath him and they were standing again, in a clinch, sagging on their feet now, faces draped over each other’s shoulders as if slow-dancing. Dean shoved him away, pulling his fists up, breath whistling through his nose.

“Goddammit you son of a bitch it’s not _fair_ —”

Cas hurt for him, wanted to touch him and heal the tissues and capillaries. His grace held steady and while his boxed ear rang and he felt pain everywhere, he knew his body bore almost no damage. Behind them more boxes cascaded to the floor, rotten sides bursting and contents spilling free.

Dean clocked him in the jaw once again before, centering himself, Cas faked left, whirled right, and then rushed Dean from behind in a crouch, tackling him at the knees, wondering if it were possible to tire out the Mark just by staying on the move.

This time when they went down, Dean lay immobile beneath him.

Dazed, Cas paused, shocked into stopping. He backed off on all fours, but Dean remained facedown, unmoving. He tried to say his name but only air and consonants came out. One of Dean’s punches must have caught him in the larynx.

Cas crawled back toward him and reached out a tentative hand; which is when Dean suddenly rolled over and grabbed Cas’s wrist, quicker than a snake.

He seized Cas in both arms and used the momentum of his turn to keep twisting, disorienting him, their death roll only ending when they crashed into the row of hoes and rakes.

Dean happened to be on top when they collided with the tools and, as if in slow motion, a square shovel fell directly onto the back of his head. His eyes all but crossed but he still got in another effective left jab to Cas’s cheekbone as rakes and tool handles pelted both of them.

Like most men of his size, Dean always fought with strength, not agility. Cas allowed his head to roll with the blow and used the snap to push him out from under, sliding to one side and flexing to his feet, leaving Dean in a pile of jumbled rusting gardening equipment. Cas stood there gasping, trying to see one move ahead.

The move he hadn’t seen was Dean, still on his stomach, fumbling until he connected with the broken-off handle of a pickaxe, which he seized underhand, fingers tightening around it with obvious purpose.

As he began to roll over, eyes glassy with enmity, Cas settled his stance like a cat and, instead of retreating as he should have done, prepared to pitch himself forward directly onto the splintered stake as soon as Dean struck with it.

He saw the next few seconds in his mind as if they had always been meant to play out this way.

Steeling himself against what was coming, he prepared to be penetrated just as the night they’d met in a sigil-shielded barn, only this time he would not be able simply to slide out the knife and drop it to the floor, unhurt, amused. He told himself it would be as bad as when April betrayed and reamed him, as bad as the resonant agony echoing in his chest when Metatron had gored Dean and bragged about it, but yet even worse than these—not so much pain, which was unimportant, but the wrongness of it: because it would be Dean himself behind the execution.

 _I'm dying anyway,_ he thought, as Dean struggled to stand. _It might as well be now._

He would die on his feet, without regrets, his mouth against that of the one being he loved more than any other of God’s creations. It would be worth dying for—

_So that, without thinking, when Dean faltered, Cas knelt and wrapped a hand around his shoulder, that shoulder, to help raise him—,_

•

_Whereupon, their motion suspended, his palm pressed exactly against—,_

_When then linear time stopped, or more accurately entered remission,—_

_When all movement stilled, nothing stirred, not even the hovering dust motes, tiny winking specks like stars, floating static in beams of light through dirt-streaked windows,—_

_When Dean looked up at Cas as he once had done, and neither so much as breathed,—_

•

They were again as they were then, separate and together in an identical place. Again as then, once more Castiel descended screaming, a shooting star, blue-white as s/he hurtled ever downward, falling for thirty years and more, diving headfirst, sword upraised to pierce through fetid dankness, hearing as s/he drew nearer unendurable suffering: long tremulous tongueless screams, the rip of muscle and thick crack of bone and elaborate splatter of lymph.

This time, as every time, s/he arrived far, far too late.

Castiel saw clearly what was left of Dean Winchester, up to his elbows in viscera, a clump of unidentifiable gristle in one hand, a smear of browning blood across half his face, distracted from the carcass still twitching in front of him. His eyes blank, he looked directly at the angel, sensing her/him but unable to see. Castiel’s opalescent wings scorched in the swelter, wisps of smoke wafting up from the delicate underdown. Dean could see the smoke; he raised his grotesque many-bladed implement and came forward slashing wildly, slicing through Castiel’s primaries, howling out an unpunctuated string of words that made no sense taken together or apart ( _not any you stupid just it he will mine no good shut a fault cut their to cloak you roof me take cunt hit anywhere in Sam pull alone I’m ridden so let don’t God don’t a stop burn bad come slice slap hurt of isn’t need this under broke my so please_ )—

—until, stinging, having lost fistfuls of feathers on both wings, Castiel (as shining as s/he was then, as brightly implacable) snatched the saw or scalpel or whatever horror it was from Dean’s bloodslick grasp, slung it as far away as s/he could, and seized his shoulder. Dean’s deranged chain of language settled on that last garbled word, got stuck there, became just a chanted refrain of _please please please please_ as they rose through the metaphysical filth of it, the cloying stench of incessant self-loathing—even then Castiel perceived it, even with her/his celestially limited understanding, the sick contempt for himself comprising the highly individualized torture and personal hell of the Righteous Man.

As the shrieks and bile and miasma receded, Dean’s pleas trailed away into silence, held as he was immovably against Castiel's bare chest; gradually, he lost consciousness, dying again on the ascent. The only sound Castiel heard, other than the beating of her/his own wings, was a faint sizzle as her/his unyielding grip seared deeply into human skin. By the time Castiel, slowing, exhausted, lifted them both above hell’s perimeter, only her/his faint cry rang jubilant through all the realms, taken up by all the angelic host, amplified:

_Ἀληθῶς ἀ νέστη!_

_Indeed he is risen—_

For the most abased, abject, degraded soul is inestimably precious, worthy of all efforts salvific; and this soul in particular, Castiel’s mission, moved her/him to her/his core. In a clear lake in her/his own secret heaven, where no other entity had ever come, Castiel cleansed Dean’s body him/herself, compiling protein by protein the code to rescript broken flesh, programming ganglion by ganglion the algorithm to mend a ripped anima, as best as s/he could—touching every pore, entering every follicle, speaking reassuringly to each mitochondrion and centrosome to urge it, fill its nucleus with light, speak its own cellular gospel back unto it; until the wreck of incarnate wound and psychic tatter and snapped synapse solidified beneath her/his hands, and became once again whole and human.

Became the one Castiel had no choice but from thenceforth to love, with all her/his being.

•

With a jagged, nauseating jolt, Cas fell back into the plane his body ( _his_ ) now occupied: still kneeling, still gripping Dean’s shoulder, the smell of hell thick in his nostrils and coating the inside of his mouth.

Subtly, everything had shifted. Grace arced faintly, sputtering between hand and shoulder. He couldn’t pull away his hand, couldn’t move.

Dean could move; made a muted noise that sounded like _I can’t_ before wrapping both arms tightly around Castiel’s waist, pressing his face into the skin exposed by the opened shirt collar, his entire body trembling, chest heaving. The broken tool handle clattered to the floor, forgotten.

 _Your ganglia without price, your synapses like rubies_ , thought Cas, heart thudding, memory of that clear water more vivid than in years. Watching Dean’s body take back its shape, feeling him becoming.

“Please,” Dean said again, brokenly, to no one, or as if asking himself for something but hoping Cas would grant it.

Cas came to life then, buried his face in Dean’s hair, kissing indiscriminately, only letting go of his shoulder so he could finally wind both arms around Dean’s neck and they clung to each other. He felt Dean’s face contort against the bare skin of his sternum, the wet heat of tears, from somewhere a trickle of blood.

“Come here,” said Cas, inanely; but he meant Dean’s mouth. Somehow Dean pulsed up along Cas’s body until he finally could get his fingers onto Dean’s face and use a faint tendril of grace to pull all the bruising out of his eye socket and jawline, though he left lips split open and forehead gashed, the small cuts from the day before reopened.

He touched the blood on Dean’s lower lip wonderingly with his fingertips, dizzy with longing, bent to lick salt water from beneath his eyes. “That’s what happened, why you couldn’t ever really leave. A part of you stayed in hell. We never finished it, Dean; I made the same mistake I made with Sam. I marked you but you never marked me.”

And Dean Winchester, who would outlive Leviathan trying to get the last word, couldn’t reply, fear and desire warring in him equally, unable to speak or look away, salivating, terrified.

“I get you anyway,” Cas said, crooning against his cheekbone, then biting it carefully, sniffing and blurry and as incoherent as if he were high, “I dragged you out and I have you and you always belonged to me because I made you and I've saved you and I have you right now so you’re _mine_ —”

“Jesus fuck, you talk more than I do,” Dean bit out, before surging up to crush their mouths together.

• 

Metatron, Cas concluded, through a blur of triumphant chaotic yet purposeful movement, had not written out the whole of the story after all.

Free will did exist; this proved it. Endings could be changed.

They hadn’t killed each other. They weren’t dead yet. And their bodies pressed together desperately, as if each were trying to crawl inside each other. Cas thought that might possibly be the next step.

He crowded Dean against the wooden counter and Dean not only let him but dragged him closer, making beseeching sounds, as Cas ran an open-mouthed burning trail up along his jawline into that same sweet place just below Dean’s ear, where he could feel the blood singing beneath his lips.

“I can’t,” Dean said again, he kept saying that, shaking his head, shoving Cas away and but then following him until wrapped together again they slammed into the opposite wall, knocking plaster dust from the ceiling and jarring loose a light fixture. The bulb dangled from its wiring, swaying back and forth, spitting sparks.

Cas caught Dean’s face in his hands, licked deep into his mouth, curled his tongue behind Dean’s front teeth, slid it along his palate, pulling back only to suck at his lower lip and whisper, “Okay, but you are. We are. We’re going to.” He pivoted them until Dean was up against the wall and Cas could lift up the ripped t-shirt and bite into each bruised rib one at a time as if descending a ladder, glorying in the fact that his name was engraved into each, that with every nip Dean thumped his head back against the wall and dug his fingers more tightly into Cas’s hair.

“You don’t understand,” Dean said, between bites and head-slams, “you’re an _angel_ , you don’t even, you don’t—you have no idea what it’s like to be, to always have to be, oh _god_ —”

Cas gazed at the tender part of Dean’s stomach where he’d just sunk his teeth, licked a slow circle around the place he’d bitten, then sucked it, hard, until the surface purpled, and bit it again.

“Yes,” he agreed, “don’t understand, angel, no idea,” starting back up the ladder of Dean’s ribcage on the other side, his bites again punctuated by Dean’s thwacking his skull against the wall, until at last he moaned something strangled and hauled Cas up by his hair, pulling Castiel’s mouth back onto his to muffle his own negation.

Everything seared and clung and every movement made every part of Castiel throb; this was so much better than hitting.

Abruptly he stepped back, mostly to make Dean reach out for him, which happened with gratifying immediacy; but also so that he could hook one finger in the collar of Dean’s t-shirt and rip it in half without decorum, shoving it away, licking the bare shoulder where once his hand had burned.

“Fucking just kill me, Cas,” Dean said through clenched teeth, pulling his hands back. “You know I can’t do this.”

Cas leaned in but stopped about a half-inch short of kissing him, wetting his lips slowly with his tongue just for the pleasure of watching Dean involuntarily open his mouth. He deployed his eyes once more, elated when Dean’s pupils dilated in response (it would be necessary to begin reserving that for very special occasions, it depleted him so—or perhaps it was plain carnality making his knees weak).

“That’s up to you,” he said into Dean’s mouth. “If you keep stifling yourself and holding your breath, I suppose technically you could suffocate.”

Dean closed his eyes, flinching as Cas went back to his chest, this time unhampered by fabric, humming around each nipple before licking over it in wide, soft strokes. He made another abortive choked-off sound and shoved up both arms, knocking Cas backward, and turned toward the wall, pressing his face against his arm, repeating, voice rough, “No, _no_ —I don’t _do_ this—”

Cas, undeterred, leaned into him from behind, pulling his hands up the front of Dean’s thighs, dragging his thumbs along the adductor muscles, digging them into his hips. “No? Not this?” He licked the knob of Dean’s spine, tongued along his hairline, fit his mouth into the curve of neck and shoulder and sucked, bit and bit down again. “Are you sure? What about this?” Breathing against the back of his neck, unflinching, Cas ground himself against Dean’s ass, groaning unselfconsciously at the friction of denim and muscle against cock.

“Shit,” Dean whispered, sounding completely terrified, and reached behind him with both hands to clutch Cas’s hips and draw them more tightly against him. “Don’t do this to me, I can’t let you.”

In that moment, the angel decided that he had more wrong with himself than Naomi had ever guessed: the more urgently Dean informed them both that this was impossible and it had to stop, the harder Cas got.

He rubbed himself slowly up and down, sliding his hands around to stroke smooth cool skin. Now that he’d let himself start touching, he never wanted to stop; raked his fingernails down Dean’s chest, caressed the curve of his stomach, dipped fingertips inside the waistband of his jeans where the fine, almost invisible hair began.

Finally, Cas thought, _finally_ , Dean couldn’t stay quiet. His mouth flew open and he made a primordial noise comprised solely of vowels and need, which ended with “ _Cas,_ —”

He knew no words for the name of the noise Dean had just made, but it turned him into a liquid and he knew he would fight any foe, challenge any realm, do battle with any army, give up air, space, light, freedom and existence (after the next hour or so) in order to hear it again, as often as possible.

In pursuit of this he slid his fingers down the rest of the way, grazing over the pale down of Dean’s lower belly and teasing beneath the waistband, all but purring into his ear.

“You think you know everything.” Cas flicked open Dean’s belt buckle, then unzipped his fly, still pressing rhythmically into his ass, peppering his shoulder blades with kisses alternating with bites. “You know nothing. You never let yourself even know _yourself_. You think you understand what it means to be a man, to occupy a male body, but you have no—idea—at all.”

With each word, Cas tugged the denim aside another half-inch, until he could slip his hands inside Dean’s boxer briefs and encircle his cock with both fists. The cut head of it was already slippery, _like wet velvet_ , Cas thought, stunned. He immediately wanted it in his mouth.

Dean made the sound again, this time higher-pitched and with more abandon. Cas leaned his head against Dean’s shoulder, squeezed his eyes shut, bit the inside of his mouth, and tried very hard not to ejaculate. He wasn’t entirely successful; a tiny shudder ripped through him and he felt wetness slip out, but whatever had happened, it wasn’t an impediment, so he inhaled sharply and continued touching Dean. Everything beneath Cas’s hands turned beautiful; the tender, quivering skin beneath testicles, the satiny firmness of Dean's prick becoming even more swollen in Cas’s grip as he teased and stroked and praised.

“So perfect, so good, even though you’re angry and afraid, letting me touch you, letting yourself feel how good this is,” Castiel murmured, wrapping one hand around Dean’s throat and pulling backward to arch his spine, just a little, just enough to give Cas slightly better access, and to make Dean look pretty, and curse a little more.

He withdrew his hand, invoking a blurted aghast _No, wait,_ which reversal from the negations of earlier made Cas’s dick throb against the inside of his pants. “You should trust me,” he said into Dean’s ear, tightening the grip on his throat again. Cas licked the clear fluid off his palm, closing his eyes as another overwhelming surge of pleasure washed over him, then spat into his hand and returned it to its slow stroking—rewarded for a third time by the sound, which this time went on even longer and had an extra word that sounded a lot like _please_. Cas immediately stopped moving.

“I couldn’t hear you. What did you say?”

Silence. Cas could tell Dean was biting his lip, probably hard enough to draw fresh blood.

“If you won’t say it, I'm going to stop.” Cas pulled his hand out of Dean’s boxers and made as if to fasten his jeans again.

“Oh _fuck_ no,” Dean breathed, releasing his backward grip on Castiel’s ass and turning to take him in his arms. 

Cas had forgotten during all of this that Dean was just slightly taller than he, so when Dean bent his head and drew Cas’s tongue into his mouth, Cas wound up with his arms around Dean’s neck and Dean’s hands on his ass again, and they stumbled backward until Cas was half-lying on the service counter, Dean leaning over him. Cas flung out a hand, scrabbling for purchase, and knocked over what sounded like an old box of screws or nails; they cascaded to the floor with a stochastic, festive rhythm of tings and plinks.

With difficulty Dean pulled his mouth away, sucking air. “Cas, wait. What, what about. I mean okay, _me_ , I can—I can maybe, oh shit, when did you get so fucking _sexy_ , I'm not—this isn't— _no_ —”

He tangled his fingers back into Castiel’s hair and they kissed for another year or two.

Eventually Dean pried himself off again, and stood with one hand pressed to the top of his face, hiding his eyes, breath catching, voice shaking. “It’s not even me, it’s _Sam_ , he’s going to completely—”

“Sam,” rasped Cas, taking Dean’s chin in one hand and chasing his face until they’d made eye contact again, which then distracted him from what he was trying to say, “does not care what kind of body you touch. Or whatever insistent assertions about yourself you have made over the years. I doubt he is any more fooled than I was. As little as you know yourself, how can you think you know him? Stop making decisions for him. Stop using Sam as an excuse to avoid your own heart."

Whenever Dean went even a couple of seconds without contact, Cas noted, he immediately fell into hesitation and self-recrimination. Therefore, Cas decided, they would not only have to keep touching, but do so more intensely. Having reached this conclusion, goal-minded, not thinking as a human, he issued an order as if he were among his garrison. He released Dean's chin.

"Remove my clothing. I want your hands on my skin.”

Dean’s eyes were enormous and he seemed shocked by the directness of the instruction. Cas waited, curbing his impatience. If they had to fight again, he didn’t mind.

“You said _heart_ ,” Dean accused. Cas smiled at him pleasantly, then, in a flash, grabbed Dean’s hand and cupped it against his crotch, biting down on his own lower lip.

Dean’s face managed to combine horror and longing. His eyelids drooped shut, overwhelmed with lust even as he winced. Cas studied him, fascinated.

“This goes so deeply for you, even with the Mark,” he marveled. “Let me see it.”

Dean tried to back away but Cas lashed out and caught his arm.

In the dim light the Mark actually glowed, the livid, living reddish-orange of a burning coal. Unhesitatingly Cas pressed his lips to it, and Dean turned his face away, unable to conceal whatever expression he wanted to hide.

That had been painful, Castiel realized; and Dean had liked that, liked the pain, but didn’t want him to see.

Suddenly he felt angry again. He let his dissolving grace push forward that side of him that didn’t care if he hurt Dean, as long as he brought him to the edge of mind-bending pleasure and threw him over it and caught him on the other side.

“This— _this_ is the thing that makes you want to fuck as much as to kill,” Cas reminded him, growling, and flung Dean’s arm back at him. He stepped away, fuming, pacing, his coat still on, his shirt still—he thought in vast irritation—extremely buttoned, his skin almost entirely untouched.

“Yet even despite its drive, you have such an _armature_ , so much useless _architecture_ all structured around who you think you are—what you do, what you _don’t_ do—it must be so tiresome, how do you move through the world, how do you make any decisions—”

“That’s exactly how, Cas,” Dean interrupted, and his voice sounded so stripped of defenses that Cas stopped pacing and stood, his back still to Dean, listening. “I don’t have to make those decisions. There’s a way to act and a way not to act. There’s a way to be a man and other—other things that make you less of one. So you never _have_ to think about it. Don't you get it?” Cas could tell he’d paused to pinch between his eyes, Dean’s characteristic gesture of defeat. “Look, if I give Sam shit because he’s eating salad, or drinking kale grass or wheat juice or whatever the fuck it is—I don’t _know_ , I haven’t even learned, I just make fun of it—it proves I’m doing the right thing. The safe thing, so I know I’m in the clear. Just by ordering a fucking steak.” His voice thinned with self-contempt and Cas wondered how much longer he should let this degree of introspection continue. Also, he was losing his erection and he wanted it back.

“Dean, any of these rules which attempt to maintain an already socially constructed status are epistemologically arbitrary,” he began in his most peeved tone, turning back around to continue arguing, at which point they both looked at each other and forgot everything they’d been saying and their bodies were glued together again and Cas kept trying to sweep his tongue down Dean’s throat and Dean’s hands were latched in his hair and Dean was moaning into his mouth, little short groans that he wasn’t even trying to keep back, and his skin was the warmest most delicious surface in the entire known universe, with muscles rippling beneath it wherever Cas touched, and suddenly he was fucking done.

Again. For a second time in one day. Just done. Ready to die and float up to heaven _done_.

He threaded his fingers through Dean’s belt loops and yanked him first forward and then shoved him backward, letting him go and leveling his gaze at him, at his—at this _man_. “What did I tell you to do.”

Dean gulped and his mouth fell open, a little. “Take off your clothes,” he said, faintly.

Cas stood there, again, waiting. “Before one of us dies,” he added dryly.

Dean looked undecided, as if torn once more between running from the room and passing out.

“That’s it,” Cas gritted out between his teeth. He advanced toward Dean, feeling his eyes blaze in the way that made humans take instinctive steps backward. “That’s _enough_. I know my father’s censure of the nonconsensual, and I know why it’s a sin, to take what isn’t offered or wanted; and I am also in the unique position of knowing what you need even if you won’t let yourself have it. So I intend to make sure you get it.”

Having backed up as far as he could go, against a sheet of pegboard, Dean looked around wildly. Cas reached for him and he ducked away, his habitual fight instincts having kicked in. “Are we really doing this again, Dean? Is that the only way you know how to touch another man’s body, is to strike him? Are you _that_ afraid of pleasure?” He stalked toward Dean implacably, his own fists clenched yet stricken only with the ache to melt against him.

And then Dean was shouting, arms crossed over his naked chest, shivering, eyes snapping.

“ _Fuck you, Castiel!_ It’s so fucking _easy_ for you, isn’t it. Just waltz in and out, come and go, fly hither and thither like a fucking rainbow glitter _fairy_ , with your big wide eyes and your whole naïve ‘of course I used protection, I had my angel blade’ bullshit _act_ —you’re not the one who has to _live_ here, you never stay—I unbend enough to tell you I’m glad you’re back and you just turn and _walk out the door_ because, oh, I’m sorry, there’s a female in the car!—which, by the way, thanks for mentioning that was fucking _Hannah,_ who tried to have me killed at least twice, that I _know_ of, your new girlfriend is probably off somewhere making her Christmas hit list right now and pretty sure I’m near the top of it— so don’t _start_ with this shit, you can’t just _show_ up here after months and years away and act like you’re my, what, my fucking _daddy bear_ or something, because in case you don’t remember? you left me, and you _vanished_ , and you’ve done it again and again and _again_ , Cas. You _don't_ always come when I call, okay? You stayed in Purgatory on purpose. And then you fucking _died_ , and I didn't even know how I was going to—you always _leave_. And you come back and then you just leave _again._ ”

He paused, winded. The Mark was visibly radiating and Cas knew Dean was either about to attack him or maybe, finally, take his clothes off. 

“And now I don’t even have a fucking t-shirt. You know what? If you gave me a twenty for every time you’ve randomly flapped out in the middle of a conversation, with me yelling, like a fucking moron, _Cas, come back_ , I’d have enough to buy us a decent hotel room to bone in, instead of this dusty shitty store with, with _hoes_ in it. And _shovels_. And _boxes of nails_.”

Their gazes locked, on the precipice yet again. Castiel despaired.

 _Will we always teeter, half on the brink?_ Here he was, a six-foot-tall adult human male. His vessel had fathered a child, a girl now close to being an adult herself; he’d been married twice, kissed a demon, had a one-night stand with a woman (well, she’d seemed like a woman at the time); he’d learned to jerk off, first silently in bathrooms bent over the sink, holding his breath, mouthing Dean’s name; then in showers, legs spread, fingers inside himself, crying out aloud and biting down on his own upper arm when he came. He’d slain thousands of angels, whole cities filled with humans, more monsters than anyone could count. And yet here he was, still too many feet away from the one man whose body he’d wanted to enter since he’d first pulled that serrated knife out of his own chest, curious even then, _But what would it be like to put something of _mine_ inside of _ him _?_

“Those things are all true,” Cas said. He looked directly at Dean, not hiding it. “I have left you. As you have shoved me away, lied to me, avoided me, ignored me. Mocked your own sexuality and by extension, me, just because I loved you.”

Dean’s face broke open. There was no other way for Cas to describe what he saw; Dean's face just shattered, and everything that Cas knew he held guarded deep inside him now sat right at the front of his eyes and lay on the surface of his skin. This was the face he wore when alone, when he buried the people he loved, when he prayed. Everything there, visible and exposed, even as he shook his head, eyes glassy with unshed tears. “Don’t you fucking _say_ that shit, man. You don’t mean it. Heart, love—I know angels, okay, and emotions ain’t exactly your wheelhouse, so don’t pretend you even know what those words _mean_ to us.”

 _Wait,_ Cas thought. This was important. What had he missed? His impatience blinding him again. He had missed something.

He turned his head away, half-listening.

An old story he’d first heard in Anatolia, millennia ago, eavesdropping on humans seated in a circle around the fire, drinking and singing into the night as they loved to do (Sam and Dean’s version of this: _Game of Thrones_ , a six-pack of El Sol, an extra-large pizza).

In the story, the sun and wind make a bet as to who can make a traveler remove his coat. The wind blows violently, but the man just pulls his coat more tightly around himself.

But the sun, instead, just shines—at first gently, and then more, and more, increasingly hot and bright; and without a struggle, the man removes his coat, naturally.

 _Not a cold wind_ , Cas thought. _Not a fight. Not a fist, not an order. Just the sun._

•

Castiel looks up at Dean and lets his own face fall open, as it does most of the time anyway. But he usually doesn’t put any words with it, because he thinks Dean would hate that.

This time he’s dying, and he’s _done_.

“I love you,” he says without thinking, because he thinks it every second anyway, and it comes as easily as his next exhalation.

Dean waves it away, averting his eyes. “Cas, it doesn't—it doesn’t _mean_ to you what it means to me, okay? You’re talking about brotherhood or friendship or something, and I feel that way too, I’d take a bullet for you same as Sam, but that’s not what it—you don’t know what you're saying—”

Here he stops, because Cas has tossed his coat aside and is unbuttoning his shirt and pulling it off one sleeve at a time. He drops it on the floor, and takes a step closer.

“I know what it means,” he says, kicking off his shoes, and reaching down to pull off his socks. The floor is cool and smooth. He hopes there will be a room and a bed in their future; maybe Dean’s room in the bunker, maybe a motel.

He hopes they’ll have a future.

“It means when I’m in a room with you I lose track of what you’re saying because I’m just watching your mouth move and be so beautiful and wanting to put my fingers and my tongue and my cock in it, and have you put yours in mine. It means you had to ask me over and over again, for years, to give you more personal space before I could understand what that even meant, because in my mind, you belonged as close to me as I could get you.”

He steps out of his navy slacks, and moves closer, pulling his bloodied undershirt over his head.

Dean seems frozen in place. Cas becomes aware of his own exposed sun-browned skin, the dark hair curling on his stomach, the strength in his arms, his smell. He rubs his face slowly, grateful for his body, and doesn’t understand how any person can not want another, especially someone he loves.

“Worst of all, Dean, it means when I’m not with you I feel like I’m bleeding out slowly, like I'm leaking grace. But I tell myself you don’t want me, because most of the time you don’t seem to care unless I can be of use in some way. Because most of the time you’re focused on Sam and not yourself. Because once you literally told me to get out of your ass.”

Finally, he pulls down the cheap white cotton boxers, kicks them aside, not taking his eyes from Dean’s, knowing that the body that’s now his is acceptably lovely, aware that, through no fault of his own, his hipbones are succulent and his stubble is stomach-twistingly male and his fingers are long and slender and strong and clever-looking and Dean wants them inside him, and he knows this, he _knows_ Dean sees his erect cock, flushed and wettened at the tip because of him, and that he wants that, too, that he wants all of _him_ —

With one more step, Cas has moved back inside the only circle of real warmth he’s ever known, that perfect golden-green sphere of light that is, for him, being all up inside the personal space of one Dean Winchester, for all his neuroses and emotional immaturity, his substance abuse and misaligned priorities and stupid macho inability to just pull Castiel into his arms and tell him—

“Oh God, Cas, you idiot, of course I want you," Dean half-laughs, half-groans, digging his fingernails into Cas's back, his mouth against Cas's throat. "I've loved you so long— _fuck_ , I thought you knew. How could you not know. Of course I fucking love you. Everyone knows I love you, but me and you.” Dean presses frantic kisses to his eyelids, his hairline, his jaw, his collarbone. Cas feels the rasp of Dean’s beard against his, and he thinks he might not survive this. Maybe that’s exactly what Dean’s been afraid of. Falling apart and never being put back together.

Cas pulls Dean’s mouth down to his and this time their kiss is slow and clinging and ripe with the promise of everything in time. _What a stupid day for both of us to be dying_ , Cas thinks, running his lips over Dean’s, tasting him (he’s different from Sam: tangy but also sweet, like citrus candy, with undercurrents of peat and something metallic but softer, maybe cordite) (will he tell Dean about Sam? that’s maybe up to Sam—).

Dean reaches down without preamble and shoves his own jeans and boxers off together, kicking off boots and crumpling everything together, all shed in a wad of fabric, and pulls Cas back against to him. “Baby, how could you even _think_ I don’t want you there, I want you where I am all the fucking time, I think even _Sam_ knows how it kills me when you just—”

“He knows,” Cas says, smiling against Dean’s mouth. They shiver and touch everywhere, not desperately but ecstatically, it’s heady, fire beneath the skin, like Sappho sang—

“λέπτον δ' αὔτικα χρῷπῦρ ὐπαδεδρόμηκεν,” Cas murmurs, voice dropping even deeper than usual, because Greek is a sung language as much as spoken and you start low so you have somewhere higher to go when it matters. _A delicate fire rushes suddenly under my skin._

“That’s what she said,” Dean responds automatically, absorbed with nuzzling into the notch at the base of Cas’s throat, despite the fact that there’s probably dried blood there. He moves his hands across the breadth of Cas’s chest wonderingly, caressing his nipples, pinching hard, and Cas laughs, whether out of relief or because it tickles. Also it’s increasingly difficult to stand upright.

“But that _is_ what she said. Sappho of Lesbos. Who was actually bisexual. And then, it goes on, ἐπιρρόμβεισι δ' ἄκουαι— _I hear nothing over the roaring in my ears_.”

“Nerd,” Dean says breathlessly, sliding his hands down to cup Cas’s ass cheeks. Tentative at first, and then more assertively, he lines himself up against Cas, and thrusts up into his stomach, their hips snapping together. It’s so blindingly good, shockingly so, that Cas draws back and, without questioning the impulse, slaps Dean across the face. Dean’s lips are parted slightly in astonishment and a bright blush forms on one cheek. Cas admires it, caressing Dean’s warmed face with the same hand as his cock gets improbably harder.

“Fuck, that’s—oh god,” Dean says, looking down, and Cas’s hand wraps around Dean’s prick to confirm it was true for both of them: a spill of precome now makes it easier for Cas to pull Dean’s cock in long gliding movements, twisting his wrist on the downstroke in a way that makes Dean’s breath hiss.

He reaches down and stops Cas’s hand. And everything that keeps shifting, shifts again. Cas wonders if what's between them will always be in motion.

•

Dean can't believe what he's about to say. But then he already can't believe any of this, or basically his whole life so far; so there's that.

“I can’t lie, because you already know it anyway—I loved that. But here’s the thing. We need to talk about how to—there’s a whole area of knowledge that you might not—” Dean stops, defeated. “Oh man, I am in way over my head.” But if they’re doing this, they’re already doing it, and besides this guy did just try to beat the crap out of him. “Cas, do you know what a safeword is?”

Cas frowns, mostly because Dean’s still not letting him move his hand. “Like a spell?”

“More like—like a kill switch. We pick a word, either the same one or two different ones, and if you say the word, or I say the word, the other person stops, immediately, without discussion, and checks in. Because the person who said the word doesn’t like what just happened. And before you ask: the safeword can’t just be _no,_ or _stop_ , because those ones are…they’re too much fun,” Dean finishes hoarsely.

Cas has gone back to jacking him slowly, his other hand cradling Dean’s testicles, fingers sliding curiously back toward his asshole, and Dean swallows with an audible click and decides to demonstrate the erotic uses of refusal, in case the angel has forgotten what happened barely half-an-hour ago. He moans, “Cas, no, _don’t_ , I can’t, please, you _have_ to stop—”

He opens one eye, to see what effect this has had, if any. Not only has Cas not even paused in his investigations but now his own uncut dick is pulsing, twitching upward with every heartbeat, and he’s staring at Dean’s mouth like Dean’s a meatsuit he’s about to possess.

“No doesn’t mean no.”

“Not in our case. Other cases, yes. People who aren’t us. And frankly I don’t want there to be people who aren’t us. So, you know. Pick a safeword.”

Cas thinks for a second, licking his fingertips and then reaching back to circle more wetly around where he’d been, pressing gently, seemingly unaware of the effect this is having. Dean holds his breath and thinks about wendigos, unhygienic witches, changing the Impala’s brake fluid.

“SucroCorp,” Cas says finally; and Dean couldn’t agree more.

“That…that totally works. So—so this is—okay, come here, I can’t say this while I’m looking at you.” Dean sucks Cas’s earlobe into his mouth briefly before talking softly right into his ear. “I not only don’t _mind_ if you push me around? I get off on it. When you take control—hell, when anyone does, but especially if it’s you—I'm gonna lose my fucking mind. So what I want…shit, I’m terrible at this. I want you to take what you need. Tell me what you want me to do. Make me do it. And even if I say no, keep going. Unless I hit the switch.”

Cas’s response to this speech is to blink, and then bulldoze him back against the counter so hard Dean grunts from the impact. He drops to his knees and starts licking inside Dean’s thighs, fingers still furled between them. This wasn't at all the reaction Dean expected, and he thinks he may die from it. He curls his hands in Cas’s dark brown hair and tries not to beg. Or maybe Cas wants him to beg. He can beg, he can totally beg—

“Jimmy did it, but I haven’t,” confesses Cas in an impossible baritone, before suddenly sliding down over Dean and taking in about three-fourths of him until he can’t breathe and has to pull back. Dean wants to shove him away because this is wrong and he's not fucking gay, okay, but Cas’s hair is a disaster and his lips are flushed and slick with saliva and he’s hotter than a Mexican beach at spring break and his mouth is so tight and no way is Dean going to miss a second of this, no matter how freaked out he is. Cas goes down more carefully, keeping one hand moving around Dean’s cock, finding an uncertain rhythm that gradually evens out and intensifies and almost imperceptibly speeds.

It’s so good it’s maddening. _Do not fuck his face, he's an angel, do not fuck the angel’s face_ , Dean thinks frantically to himself, because it’s tempting, so wet and hot and perfect; but it turns out this is not the thought he should have been thinking, because it turns him on even to tell himself he can’t do it, and suddenly he’s right there and it’s too late to even—“Your fucking _mouth_ —oh god I’m going to come—Cas, fuck, _wait_ —”

Dean presses his hands down on the counter and his head falls backward and he feels like he’s flying apart, he’s blind with the orgasm and with love for this fucking asshole who always flies away and leaves him _alone_ and half-terrifies him and not an hour ago tried to beat holy hell out of him, and he’s trying to do the polite thing and pull away but Cas won’t _let_ him, he’s got Dean by both hipbones and, oh god, where did he learn how to _suck_ like that, his tongue suctions against the underside of the head every time he swallows, and Dean can’t stop and he just keeps coming, long rolling spurts that jerk his hips and seem to come from someplace deep inside him and make his thighs clench, and he shouts, and curses, and says Cas’s name over and over again, almost sobbing, grabbing at his head, his neck, his shoulders, at any part of him he can reach.

When his brain works right again, Dean finds they’ve slid down onto the floor and he’s somehow, he can’t work out how, in Cas’s lap. He’s still amazed by the breadth of Cas’s chest, the width of his biceps. Castiel is nuzzling one of Dean’s nipples and fondling the other one and Dean can’t figure out how god’s holy tax accountant turned out to be so incredibly hot, and avid in the sack. He also can’t figure out what to do with the fact that Cas isn’t a chick, and why he’s not freaking out enough to stop him from wanting this, and actually he can’t figure out anything, and he’s totally boneless and puts up no resistance even when Cas lays him down, kneels between his legs and licks up the stray bits of come off Dean's stomach, the droplets he somehow missed, and then crawls back up Dean’s body and rests his entire weight on top of him, grinning like he’s won first prize at the county fair. 

That particular smile breaks Dean’s heart. He’s seen it like three times in their entire friendship, and, new life goal: at least once a day, from here on out. If he has to get blown every day, he’s willing to sacrifice himself to make that grin happen.

“I believe that was successful,” Castiel says, suddenly deadpan, and _there’s_ his sassy nerd angel, the one who started out with a stick up his ass and has ended up with the driest sense of humor of all of them. Dean wishes, for a bare half-second, that Balthazar and Gabriel (well, okay, maybe not Gabriel) were still alive to see who their brother’s become. He knows they’d both be thrilled about the gay sex part. They’d probably throw an orgy to celebrate.

 _(Shit, I just had gay sex_ Dean thinks, and can't decide if he's horrified or actually kind of high-fiving himself. Oh, but wait—)

A sinful tanned lithe muscular length of male angel is sliding up against him, gripping Dean’s hips and thrusting his cock against Dean’s stomach, and Dean stifles a moan because he can’t possibly get it up again yet but he already wants to, so instead he grabs Cas’s hand, pulls it up to his face and licks it obscenely, pulling the fingers into his mouth and slobbering shamelessly and thoroughly all over them and basically giving Cas’s longest two middle fingers the kind of simulated pornographic blowjob he’s had strippers do for him. Cas’s mouth opens as he watches, but he can’t stop moving against Dean, panting, needing him.

“Babe, wait, it’s too—it’s dry, you’ll hurt yourself. You swallowed all the lube.” _Why did I lick_ his _hand?_ Dean suddenly wonders. _I’m getting an F in gay sex._ “Give me a second, just—” This time Dean wets his own hand and lowers it to find Cas’s already wrapped around his actually kind of completely fucking gorgeous cock. Somehow their hands link and they’re sliding together slowly up and down as Dean’s other hand grabs the back of Cas’s thigh, right underneath the curve of his ass, pinning Cas down against him, and they move—

It's too late to freak out about Cas having a dick. If he’s honest with himself, and he’s trying to be, Dean wants to taste it as much as he’s ever wanted his mouth on a woman, even more so because it’s Cas and he needs to hear him make—

—sounds. Those sounds he’s making right now. The ones making Dean hard again.

“Dean. This, your hand, our hands together, it’s so good, so much better than—”

“Shh, baby, please don’t say it. It’s my fault, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry it wasn’t me—" Cas is gasping into his mouth now, eyes wild, Dean's hand digging into his ass so hard it has to be bruising him, Dean's definitely not in tears, he's not trembling, not even a little— "—it's my fault I didn’t get there fast enough, I never should have made you leave in the first place, it nearly killed me and when I thought you were gone and I couldn’t ever get you back I _knew_ , I knew it wasn't just—oh Jesus _Christ_ , Cas, you’re so fucking _hot_ , I want your dick in my mouth, I want you to fuck me, I can’t even believe how much I want it, and right now I need you to come all over me, fucking come on my stomach, do it—”

Dean doesn’t even have time to be embarrassed about the things he’s saying because Cas has him by both shoulders and fucks into Dean’s hand harder, shaking all over, and Dean’s hanging on for dear life, holding the rhythm, just trying so hard to make it good for him, and without knowing what else to do he leans up and licks into the curve of Cas’s ear, and says it—says, “I love you, Castiel. I love you so fucking much—”

And that’s it, there’s an endlessly long moment where Cas’s entire body seizes up and he stops breathing, and he looks down at Dean with nothing held back, so Dean can just drown in those eyes, Cas’s eyes, blown ocean-wide and stunned with pleasure, and then Cas bites down on Dean’s shoulder, hard enough to break the skin, but Dean doesn’t care because Cas is screaming and jerking against him erratically and Dean feels wet hotness shooting up between them and just the _noises_ he’s making, Jesus fuck, how is this _happening again_ —

—it just is, so the instant Castiel goes limp and lets go, Dean kisses an apology into his hair and then, hand still slick, lets it fly over his own cock, coming in barely a dozen strokes as Cas whispers, “Yes, Dean, always, always for me, always come,” and fastens his mouth over Dean’s and swallows his sounds the same way he sucked down his cock, as though he wants every part inside of him—which, Dean figures, if Cas feels anything like the way he does, is probably true. How did he miss all this was going on with them until now.

“τρόμος δὲ παῖσαν ἄγρει,” intones Cas, after a few days, or maybe like three minutes.

“If you say so,” huffs Dean, who suddenly has to pee really badly. He has no idea what time it is. And he needs Advil. And there’s Sam, who’s presumably still passed out. And the Mark, and Cas’s grace, and they’re both going to die if they don’t figure it out (although Dean wonders if having Cas just top the shit out of him on a regular basis might keep the Mark at a distance), and fuck everything.

Cas scrabbles for a piece of Dean’s shredded t-shirt and cursorily scrubs at the wetness between them, throwing it aside and then hauling some other clothing underneath them, awkwardly wadding it up in a vague pillow-like shape under Dean’s head and then collapsing again on top of him, droning softly in what Dean guesses is more ancient Greek.

He really doesn’t want Sam to take the Mark; or Cas, or anyone. He wonders what’s happened to Cain, whom he accidentally on purpose forgot to go back and murder as promised. Is he alive somewhere, drinking afternoon tea from a china set, tending beehives and putting honeycomb in glass jars? Did he die without the Mark? Does he want it back? Why does anyone have to have it? Can’t Dean just throw it into a volcano? Could they cut his arm off and bury it?

 _We always figure it out,_ he thinks. _We’ll figure it out this time too._

Then, unbidden: _And this time I have a reason to live._

Did he not have a reason before? No, he didn’t. He had Sam, and maybe he didn’t really even know him—for so many years Sam was his mission, his take-care-of-your-little-brother, not a separate person. But this guy—this _angel,_ with the scratchy stubble and the rude squint and the disastrous outfit and the weird dick-angel family and the infuriating tendency to disappear—for this man, he would try to live. Because Dean knows now from bitter experience what happens to him when Cas dies (nightmares, flashbacks, puking hangovers that barely paper over how gutted he is, the sick sense of loss). And if Cas feels even half the way he does, Dean can’t do that to him. Can’t leave him alone like that, not if he can help it, not without at least trying.

He pulls Castiel closer, wordlessly. Cas has gone all pliant; and while Dean loves all versions of him (nothing will ever turn him on like Cas at his most outraged and dangerous), right now he appreciates this limp drowsy one.

Without any discussion about how to do it they seamlessly draw their bodies together and arrange themselves into a complicated knot, every part of them touching every other part; arms and legs twined around each other for warmth, until even on the chilled hardware store floor they manage to drowse, half a sunbeam across them, heads pillowed on Dean’s wadded-up jeans and boots.

Scraps of song lyrics straggle through his mind; probably the same reason Cas was mumble-singing some dead Greek lesbian. Bisexual, whatever.

In Dean’s case, though, it’s a British power trio from the sixties, with a dead bass player and a sellout lead guitarist.

“In the white room, with black curtains, [tired starlings](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYSVMgRr6pw),” he sings inaudibly into Cas’s hair, slipping the soft brown strands of it between his fingers, inhaling its bitter smell, snuffing as much Castiel up into his nostrils as possible, like he can keep him there. He knows he’s getting all the words wrong but doesn’t care, and Cas won’t know. “Silver horses, fly down moonbeams, in your dark eyes,” he whispers, cradling a fading angel in his arms, suddenly protective and fierce. “I’ll wait for you here till the shadows run from themselves.”

**Author's Note:**

> Oh my stars and garters. First of all, thank you for reading this hot hypergraphic mess. If you made it all the way to the end I'll buy the next round at the pub. Come see me on [tumblr](http://bert-and-ernie-are-gay.tumblr.com) or [twitter](http://twitter.com/jsalowe) to place your drinks order.
> 
> Then, major caveat from a standpoint of healthy BDSM practices: unless your partner is _literally_ an angel who rebuilt your entire cellular structure after raising you from hell? then, you know, don't let zer tell you what you want. Like, fucking ever. Enthusiastic consent is not only hot but non-optional.
> 
> If there's anything good in this it came from [porcupinegirl](http://archiveofourown.org/users/PorcupineGirl) and [bettydays](archiveofourown.org/users/sadrobots), who were the most patient kind shrewd betas to ever beta and caught all my most embarrassing errors before you had a chance to see them. The latter in particular has proven so good at kicking my verbal ass on the regular it kind of makes my eyes roll back in my head (don't ever change, y'all). Any remaining prose disasters (random changes in verb tense and point of view!) are, sadly, mine and mine alone.
> 
> The attic Greek that Cas keeps geeking out over is Sappho 31, "[Phainetai moi](http://www.bopsecrets.org/gateway/passages/sappho.htm)." In addition to Sappho, this story has five songs—three radio pop, two classic rock—and three photographs of beautiful places that angels apparently like, all linked to directly in the text, for your transmedia pleasure.


End file.
